Energy & Fuel

"Wisconsin towns want regulatory control. Will the state take it away from them?"

"Dark clouds of soot and gases spewed by tractors, bulldozers and backhoes are becoming a thing of the past under new federal standards that have forced cleaner diesel engines this year."

"You might expect the biggest lease owner in Canada's oil sands, or tar sands, to be one of the international oil giants, like Exxon Mobil or Royal Dutch Shell. But that isn't the case. The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David."

"The Interior Department announced Wednesday that it sold $872 million worth of leases in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico to major oil companies."

"Insects living in wetland grasses along Louisiana's coast oiled in the aftermath of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster are still dying, the result of exposure to remaining oil in the marsh almost four years later, Louisiana State University entomologist Linda Hooper-Bui said Wednesday."

"Environmentalists fighting the Keystone XL pipeline are rallying to block a Maryland natural gas export terminal as momentum builds to use the U.S. fuel as a weapon against Russia’s intervention in Ukraine."

"President Barack Obama’s advisers are lining up against the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Top Democratic donors oppose the project. And Obama himself dismisses claims that it will create many jobs."

"Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit in New Orleans on Tuesday against United Bulk's coal export facility in Plaquemines Parish, alleging the facility is polluting the Mississippi River."

"A major oil pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics Partners LP leaked thousands of gallons of crude oil into a nature preserve in southwest Ohio late on Monday."

"When rancher Clint McRae first saw the swirling green and white ponds of arsenic, boron, mercury and lead-containing sludge 10 miles from his property, it was in a photography show at the Montana statehouse. He first thought they were abstract art, but quickly realized some were aerial photos of the ash slurry left over from burning coal at southeastern Montana’s Colstrip Steam Electric Station."