"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will order wastewater disposal wells shut near the epicenter of a 5.6 magnitude earthquake that struck on Saturday around Pawnee, Oklahoma, local media reported on Tuesday."
"A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from opening more than 1 million acres in Central California to oil drilling because the agency did not properly explore the potential dangers of fracking."
"A former top Bureau of Land Management official in New Mexico who later headed an oil and gas trade group accepted improper industry gifts while at the agency and 'attempted to obstruct' a federal investigation into his conduct, according to an inspector general's report that was kept from the public for more than three years."
"Murray Energy Corp. made a $250,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys General Association last year and, in return, the coal mining company’s chief executive got a closed-door meeting with state prosecutors to discuss the Obama administration’s regulation of power plants. Eleven days later, the attorneys general went to federal court to fight the rules that Murray Energy says could put the coal industry out of business."
"When utility executives gathered over dinner in 2001 to commiserate about looming reactor closures and start lobbying Congress for help, their first order of business was picking a name for their advocacy group."
"Congress is going down to the wire on a bill to rewrite federal energy policy."
"An American Indian tribe succeeded Tuesday in getting a federal judge to temporarily stop construction on some, but not all, of a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline, but its broader request still hangs in the balance."
"Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Inc. on Tuesday agreed to buy Houston’s Spectra Energy Corp. in an all-stock deal valued at about $28 billion, creating a major North American energy-infrastructure company at a time when energy-industry operators continue to deal with the fallout from low oil prices."
"Jake Bowen slips slowly down a telephone pole, his boots fixed with little metal spears to grip the wood. 'It's just like starting all over again, but I figure a couple of years the money will start rolling in better,' he says, his face dripping with sweat from the Kentucky humidity. 'It has to be better on my health. I won't be breathing in the coal dust and the rock dust no more.'"
"The Obama administration today finalized guidance documents outlining exactly how federal land managers will implement provisions in sweeping greater sage grouse conservation plans covering 67 million acres in 10 Western states."
