Nearly two dozen members of Congress sent a letter to the White House on Thursday requesting that the Obama administration intervene to stop construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. The two-page letter, co-signed by 19 members, was a direct call to action to an administration that has been the most progressive in the nation's history in its efforts to address issues affecting Native Americans.

Texas earthquakes, one reaching magnitude 4.8, were caused by injections of wastewater in drilling for oil and gas, scientists say. Using radar from satellites, a study published in the journal Science, found that five significant East Texas quakes in 2012 and 2013 were not natural occurrences. For the first time, scientists were able to track the uplifting ground movements in the quakes. The study's co-author, Stanford University geophysicist William Ellsworth, said the technique provides a way to determine which quakes are man-made.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will be in federal court on Tuesday seeking to prevent Dakota Access Pipeline crews from further destroying sacred sites after the tribe says workers deliberately bulldozed burial grounds identified in court records. Jan Hasselman, the tribe’s attorney, says an emergency motion filed Sunday for a temporary restraining order seeks to “get everybody to stand down” until a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rules on the tribe’s request for an injunction.

While the coal lobby is often blamed for a lot of Washington’s foot-dragging on addressing climate change, two major coal industry groups may be losing some of their clout. A new report from the environmental group Climate Investigations Center looks at recent losses in the membership of two major coal lobbies: the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and the National Mining Association.

With a third of its citizens below the poverty line, Gabon urgently needs to diversify and is banking on palm oil production to create rural jobs

The ongoing collapse in oil prices that began two years ago is setting the stage for a catastrophic situation in the Middle East if it continues. That catastrophe could come in three stages of war: civil war within the boundaries of each sovereign; war between sovereign states; and most broadly, for the intra-Islamic fight between the Sunnis and Shias to devolve into a war of finality between them, with one side vanquishing, conquering and perhaps even attempting to extinguish the other. I first addressed the potential for oil prices to be caught in a secular decline...

BP is to take a further $2.5bn (£1.87bn) hit as a result of the Deepwater Horizon accident, bringing the total cost of the environmental disaster to almost $62bn. The latest after-tax non-operating charge will be taken in the company’s second quarter financial results to be formally announced on 26 July. BP said the charge is expected to include a pre-tax non-operating charge associated with the oil spill of about $5.2bn. This would bring the total cumulative pre-tax charge relating to the Deepwater Horizon incident to $61.6bn, or $44bn after tax.

With oil prices plummeting, countries blessed with natural resources are feeling the heat and Norway is no exception. Politicians responding to the oil troubles are heeding calls for a new way forward, centered around startups. And the efforts to foster a new approach are led by an ambitious ex-business exec, the Crown Prince of Norway and a handful of contrarian entrepreneurs. Norway has seen the value of its state-owned oil and gas fields fall by more than $50 billion...

The Scottish Parliament has voted to support an outright ban on fracking after SNP MSPs abstained. Labour tabled an amendment saying there "should" be a full ban as part of an environment debate headed by new cabinet secretary Roseanna Cunningham. After SNP members abstained, the motion was passed by 32 votes to 29. Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse said there needed to be proper research and a public consultation before a decision was taken on fracking.

Almost 90,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a Shell oil facility into the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast on Thursday, leaving a 13- by 2-mile sheen of oil on the waves, federal authorities said. The Coast Guard said that the spill had been contained and that two companies were being contracted to begin cleanup operations. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is part of the U.S. Interior Department, said Shell Offshore Inc. reported...

An abandoned oil tanker has mysteriously washed ashore in Liberia leaving officials scratching their heads as to how it got there and what exactly happened to its crew. According to local reports the vessel emblazoned with the name Tamaya 1 was discovered washed up on a beach in Robertsport, Liberia on Wednesday with no sign of any crew. AIS data from MarineTraffic.com shows the Tamaya 1 is a 63-meter oil products tanker flagged in Panama.

Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. The Binladin Group, the kingdom’s largest construction company, has terminated the employment of fifty thousand foreign workers. They have been issued exit visas, which they have refused to honor. These workers will not leave without being paid back wages. Angry with their employer, some of the workers set fire to seven of the company’s buses.

Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract oil and natural gas from shale formations deep underground, has gone from a niche activity to the process responsible for more than two-thirds of U.S. gas supply. Fracking now accounts for 67 percent of marketed gas output, up from less than 7 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Brine spills from oil development in western North Dakota are releasing toxins into soils and waterways, sometimes at levels exceeding federal water quality standards, scientists reported Wednesday. Samples taken from surface waters affected by waste spills in recent years in the state's Bakken oilfield region turned up high levels of lead, ammonium, selenium and other contaminants, Duke University researchers said.

Sunday, April 17th was the designated moment. The world’s leading oil producers were expected to bring fresh discipline to the chaotic petroleum market and spark a return to high prices. Meeting in Doha, the glittering capital of petroleum-rich Qatar, the oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with such key non-OPEC producers as Russia and Mexico, were scheduled to ratify a draft agreement obliging them to freeze their oil...

The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK. Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past. But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns.

The world’s dependence on oil is fading, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to get left behind. The kingdom will build a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund to slowly but unmistakably transform its economy for a post-oil world, Bloomberg reported Friday morning. The news was delivered by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a five-hour interview at his royal compound that stretched until 4 a.m. local time.

In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings.

Earthquakes are a natural hazard — except when they're man-made. The oil and gas industry has aggressively adopted the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to shatter subsurface shale rock and liberate the oil and gas lurking there. But the process results in tremendous amounts of chemical-laden wastewater. Horizontal drilling for oil can also produce massive amount of natural, unwanted salt water.

Or How Texaco Supported Fascism. By Adam Hochschild.