Energy & Fuel

"Environmentalists and Alaska natives are challenging the Trump administration’s decision to sell drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, arguing the government gave short shrift to the impact on polar bears and the region’s other wildlife. The groups said they filed a pair of lawsuits Monday in a U.S. district court in Alaska, setting up an election-year battle over the controversial plan, even as the Interior Department prepares for a possible auction."

"The Interior Department is set to auction oil and gas drilling rights to an area of federal land roughly twice the size of Los Angeles over the next six weeks, as part of its first oil and gas lease sales since March."

"Thousands of oil and gas operations, government facilities and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the environment because of the coronavirus outbreak, The Associated Press has found."

"Senate Democrats are set to release a 200-page plan arguing that significant US climate action will require stripping the fossil fuel industry of its influence over the government and the public’s understanding of the crisis."

"Rio Tinto will cut the bonuses of three senior executives by a combined £3.8 million ($5 million) after the company blew up a 46,000-year old sacred indigenous site in Australia to expand an iron ore mine."

"In a nationwide blitz, gas companies and their allies fight climate efforts that they consider an existential threat to their business".

"Offshore wind — a multibillion-dollar industry poised to go up along the Atlantic seaboard — seemingly is the optimal candidate to benefit from President Trump's overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act last month."

"North Dakota’s lawsuit can proceed against the federal government to force it to pay $38 million in costs the state incurred to respond to protests over the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, a federal judge ruled Wednesday."

"The captain of the ship that ran aground in Mauritius and spilled about 1,000 tons of oil into the Indian Ocean has been arrested, his lawyer said on Tuesday."