Energy & Fuel

"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."

"Gazprom has requested permission from the Crimean authorities to develop oil and gas fields, Crimea's first Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliev said Tuesday."

"The windy plains of Kansas could be a treasure trove in the nation's effort to harness clean energy, but a major proposal to move wind-generated electricity eastward is running into a roadblock: Farmers who don't want high-power transmission lines on their land."

"Paris enjoyed a rare reprieve from traffic jams Monday as a draconian clampdown on cars, aimed at banishing stubborn levels of smog, took effect."