"Senators on Wednesday reached a deal to act on a comprehensive energy bill as soon as this week, breaking a three-month partisan standoff over the tainted water scandal in Flint, Mich."
The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) lobbied successfully to pass and preserve the "Halliburton Loophole," which exempts the oil and gas industry from the law requiring disclosure of toxic fracking chemicals.
Reflexive secrecy has been a hallmark of government efforts to deal with highly hazardous chemical facilities in recent decades. Another reminder of that secrecy came in an April 11, 2016, piece in Greenwire by Sam Pearson. Photo: The fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that exploded in 2013, killing 15 people, by Shane Torgerson, courtesy of Wikipedia.
"Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has a new line of attack against Hillary Clinton tailor-made for New York voters: that she is too soft on hydraulic fracturing."
"Institutions managing $6 trillion in assets plan to back a call for U.S. oil major ExxonMobil to disclose the impact of climate change policy on its business, one of the organizers of the vote said on Tuesday."
"A new report calls into question — again — California’s handling of this winter’s historic natural gas leak, this time suggesting that regulators and the gas company are purposely scaring the community and legislature into putting the storage facility back online."
"More than 120 religious groups are encouraging lawmakers to approve President Obama’s proposed $750 million contribution to an international climate change fund."
"The [Washington] state attorney general's office is taking a powerful Washington, D.C., lobby, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, to court, seeking damages over money laundering in a 2013 initiative campaign."
"In 1978, the DOJ told Congress IOGCC should be disbanded. It wasn't. In 2005, the group claimed credit for Halliburton Loophole after ‘years of hard work.'"
"The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank and one of the fossil fuel industry's most steadfast allies, disclosed on Thursday that the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is demanding to see records of the group's donors and activities involving climate policy."
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