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Saturday, 5 September 2026

15 briefs so farlast update 14:40 UTC

Key points

  • UK Approval for Jackdaw Gas Field Nears as Construction Hits 99%.
  • IMO Talks Fail Again on Global Shipping Decarbonisation, CleanTechnica Reports.
  • Ireland Requires 10 MW-Plus Data Centers to Self-Supply 80% of Demand From Onsite Renewables.
  • Swiss Federal Council Turns Down Guarantee for Transitgas Hydrogen Conversion.
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Policy & Geopolitics

Glencore Hits Shaft Milestone at Battery-Electric Onaping Depth Mine

Shaft development at Glencore's Onaping Depth project has reached a stage that opens a previously untouched nickel and copper orebody, with the workings located at the Craig mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Electrek reported.

Electrek put the value of the Glencore Canada project at USD 2 billion. The operation, at full production, is set to carry more than 400 permanent jobs, with nickel output from the Sudbury Basin running past 2040.

Glencore ordered 23 battery-electric machines from Epiroc for the site. Among them are Minetruck MT42 Battery haul trucks rated at 42 tonnes underground.

The fleet choice reshapes what the mine has to spend energy on. "Eliminating diesel emissions means less ventilation and cooling requirements," said Glencore Canada COO Peter Xavier, who described those two demands as traditionally among the largest in underground mining, according to Electrek.

Source: electrek.co (opens in a new tab)1 sourcePermalink

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Policy & Geopolitics

BLM Cites Wrong Parcel Table in 380,000-Acre Wyoming Lease Sale

A July auction put 284 parcels spanning nearly 380,000 acres of Wyoming federal land in front of oil and gas bidders, part of the quarterly leasing cycle run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Inside Climate News reported.

When the BLM explained why those tracts ranked as high preference, it attached the wrong evidence: a table listing tracts screened for the prior quarter's sale. The agency called the table one that had "inadvertently carried over." Environmental groups responded by questioning whether any review of the current quarter's tracts had happened.

The mix-up landed while the rules behind these auctions are being rewritten. Under a Trump administration proposal, chances for the public to weigh in on quarterly sales shrink by close to 90 percent, according to Inside Climate News. The same draft rule takes a 90-day public participation window down to 10 days.

Money terms change too. Inside Climate News reported that the royalty rate, the cut the federal government takes when a company produces oil or gas from public acreage, drops from 16.67 percent to 12.5 percent under the revision.

Cleanup guarantees get cut more sharply still. Bond minimums, the money operators park to cover plugging abandoned or failing wells, land at USD 10,000 per individual lease and USD 25,000 for a statewide group of leases, sums Inside Climate News describes as far under what such work usually costs. The Biden-era floors were USD 150,000 and USD 500,000.

The workforce behind those rules has shrunk. Federal workforce data reviewed by Inside Climate News shows the BLM shed 23 percent of its staff during the first year of the second Trump administration.

Source: insideclimatenews.org (opens in a new tab)1 sourcePermalink