The pandemic-induced global financial meltdown has rocked the fossil fuel industry, leaving American drilling and fracking companies begging for bailouts. Then things slid from crisis to catastrophe as crude prices temporarily plunged into negative territory, leading President Donald Trump to tweet this week that he would "never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down," signaling his renewed push to use taxpayers' money to throw fossil fuels a federal lifeline.

US fossil fuel companies have taken at least $50m in taxpayer money they probably won’t have to pay back, according to a review of coronavirus aid meant for struggling small businesses by the investigative research group Documented and the Guardian. A total of $28m is going to three coal mining companies, all with ties to Trump officials, bolstering a dying American industry and a fuel that scientists insist world leaders must shift away from to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.

During the partial government shutdown that started in December 2018 and became the longest in US history, the fossil fuel-friendly Trump administration plowed ahead with its “energy dominance” agenda. As about 800,000 federal workers went without paychecks, the Interior Department worked to boost oil and gas development in the Alaskan Arctic, processed fossil fuel drilling applications and permits, and even brought back dozens of furloughed employees to ensure offshore drilling activities continued.

Just a month ago, companies and investors had a financial incentive to continue investing in new oil and gas projects despite the societal and environmentalist backlash against fossil fuels. Not anymore. In just a couple of weeks, the oil price crash made investments in renewable energy starting to look more attractive. Or at least as attractive as investment in oil and gas.

U.S. oil dropped to an 18-year low on Monday as demand continues to evaporate, and as Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ nations prepare to ramp up production. With much of the world in lockdown as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, demand for oil has fallen off a cliff. People aren’t travelling and business has slowed, reducing the need for jet fuel and gasoline.

The plunging demand for oil wrought by the coronavirus pandemic combined with a savage price war has left the fossil fuel industry broken and in survival mode, according to analysts. It faces the gravest challenge in its 100-year history, they say, one that will permanently alter the industry. With some calling the scene a “hellscape”, the least lurid description is “unprecedented”.

I’m going to tell you the single worst story I’ve heard in these past few horrid months, a story that combines naked greed, political influence peddling, a willingness to endanger innocent human beings, utter blindness to one of the greatest calamities in human history and a complete disregard for the next crisis aiming for our planet. I’m going to try to stay calm enough to tell it properly, but I confess it’s hard.

Ten years ago, on April 20, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 crew members and starting the largest ocean oil spill in history. Over the next three months, between 4 million and 5 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. I was a member of the oil spill commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the causes of the disaster. Later, I served as a courtroom witness for the government on the effects of the spill.

OPEC and allies led by Russia agreed on Sunday to a record cut in output to prop up oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic in an unprecedented deal with fellow oil nations, including the United States, that could curb global oil supply by 20%.

The front-month WTI crude contract crashed by 37 percent early on Monday as the May contract expires on Tuesday and the market fears there is not much storage left in the United States amid collapsing demand in the coronavirus pandemic. At 8:54 a.m. EDT on Monday, the front-month WTI Crude price was plummeting by 37.22 percent at $11.47. The Brent Crude front-month contract was also under pressure, trading down 6.02 percent at $26.39.

As the pandemic has shut down much of the global economy—at the same time as a price war on oil—oil prices have cratered. In the U.S., crude oil prices went negative for the first time in history on Monday. Whiting Petroleum, a large shale oil company, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, and hundreds of other oil companies are also now at risk of bankruptcy. Natural gas prices are also falling. At a time when the world needs to transition from fossil fuels to avoid the even bigger catastrophe of climate change, what does the state of the industry mean for the climate?

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Tripoli says force will be used if the vessel does not stop loading at an eastern port controlled by separatists.

Hector Gallegos sits in the cab of his pick-up enjoying a few hours of calm. A day earlier, workers finished carting off the huge rig that had drilled three new wells beneath this small patch of south Texas farmland and he’s now getting ready to prime them for production. He reckons that about three weeks from now each will be producing 1,000 to 2,000 barrels a day. “That’s money!” he exclaims with a broad smile.

What began late last year as a routine new assignment for Pakistani sea captain Mirza Noman Baig ended in a dramatic night-time rescue as U.S. special forces seized the ship

Early on the morning of July 6, 2013, a runaway freight train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, setting off a series of massive explosions and inundating the town in flaming oil. The inferno destroyed the downtown area; 47 people died.

The hunt for oil is to be halted in Africa's oldest national park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a UK-based oil firm has said.

Massive injections of wastewater from the oil and gas industry are likely to have triggered a sharp rise in earthquakes in the state of Oklahoma.

A large cloud of gray smoke hovered over Williston on Tuesday morning. The North Dakota Department of Health and other agencies are monitoring air quality near the site for any potential threat, according to agency spokesman Tim Wiedrich.

If it is ever built, the Keystone XL Pipeline will exist for one reason: To move Canadian tar sands oil from remote Alberta to refineries in Texas.