Friday, 28 August 2026

DR Congo and Angola have signed a US-backed railway agreement intended to improve the movement of minerals to the Atlantic coast, Semafor reported, in a contest among global superpowers over control of Africa's key resources.

The Lobito Corridor links mineral-rich DR Congo and Zambia to Angola's Atlantic ports. According to Semafor, experts believe that once the corridor is fully operational, journey times that currently stretch to 30 days could fall to a week or less.

The agreement lands in a mining sector where Chinese firms already hold the dominant position. A report from the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency showed that Chinese companies control 72% of the copper and cobalt mines in DR Congo, Semafor reported.

Copper and cobalt are core inputs for battery cells and grid cabling, which places the routing of Congolese output at the center of competition over supply chains. The railway deal targets the export leg of that chain rather than the mines themselves.

The Payra 1320 MW Thermal Power Plant on Bangladesh's coast has run without regular air-quality testing, and Mongabay reports that nearby residents say they are suffering as a result.

A review of the plant's stack emissions test documents covering 2021 to 2025 found that the Department of Environment's Barishal Divisional Office never once carried out a stack emission test, according to Mongabay.

The plant is operated by Bangladesh-China Power Company Ltd. and started operations in 2020, Mongabay reported. It burns 10,000 to 12,000 tons of coal a day to generate electricity.

Where a measurement does exist, it sits above the national limit. Mongabay cites a 2021 reading that put particulate matter at 310 micrograms per cubic meter, against a standard of 200 μg/m³.

The regulatory framework for the site was set more than a decade ago. The Department of Environment approved Payra's Environmental Impact Assessment on Aug. 10, 2015, and issued site clearance with 57 conditions attached, according to Mongabay.

That gap between the conditions written into the clearance and the monitoring actually performed is the core of Mongabay's account: a coal unit of 1320 MW capacity consuming up to 12,000 tons of fuel daily, with no stack emission test on file from the divisional regulator across a five-year document trail.

The Trump administration is accelerating an environmental review of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System that would reauthorize the line for another 30 years, according to Inside Climate News.

The Bureau of Land Management has cut the public comment period on the review to 15 days, Inside Climate News reported. Federal agencies usually accept comment for 30 to 60 days, or longer where the rules are complex. The comment deadline falls on September 10 at 10 p.m. Alaska Time.

BLM, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, was not scheduled to renew the pipeline's right-of-way until 2034, which would have been the third renewal since 1974.

The line has carried more than 19 million barrels of oil from Alaska's North Slope since operations began in 1977, according to Inside Climate News. Throughput last year averaged 463,000 barrels per day, according to BLM.

Inside Climate News reported that two of the pipeline's owners, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, each contributed USD 1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.

The review follows the executive order Trump signed on January 20, 2025, titled "Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential," which included a directive to ramp up fossil fuel development and production on federal and state lands in Alaska.