Energy & Fuel

"President Obama is taking aim at roughly $50 billion in tax breaks for the oil, natural gas and coal industries. "

"CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Coal companies working with the government on the long-planned $1.65 billion FutureGen clean-coal project said Tuesday they have no choice but to shut it down after the Department of Energy suspended the majority of its funding."

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday said the collapse in oil prices has cast doubt on the State Department's conclusion that building the Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline would not cause a big boost in greenhouse-gas emissions."

"It isn’t on its dying breath, but the J.E. Corette coal-fired power plant, for 40 years Billings’ worst air polluter, could be weeks away from its last gasp."

"For as long as 400-ton dump trucks have been rumbling around the open pit mines of Canada’s oil sands, crews from Kal Tire have been on hand to replace and repair their $70,000, 13-foot diameter tires."

"Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a minority investor in BP's failed Macondo well, is on the hook for federal pollution fines for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, regardless of whether the company was responsible for the disaster, a federal judge said Monday (Feb. 2)."

"CASPER, Wyo. -- The Wyoming company whose pipeline leaked 30,000 gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River in Montana and its sister company have had multiple pipeline spills and federal fines levied against them in the last decade, according to government records."

"Coal prices, already down 52 percent since 2011, are forecast to keep falling. The rout shows that exporters’ OPEC-like tactics of trying to squeeze out high-cost producers have been frustrated by the rising dollar."

"President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget proposes $7.4 billion to fund clean energy technologies and a $4 billion fund to encourage U.S. states to make faster and deeper cuts to emissions from power plants, officials told Reuters."

"Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on Thursday signed an executive order reinstating a moratorium on new leases for oil and natural gas development in state parks and forests."