Energy & Fuel

"Before lawmakers could agree to a $1.1 trillion, last-minute deal to avoid shutting down the U.S. government, they first had to deal with a couple of birds."

"The American benchmark price for crude oil broke the symbolically important $60 a barrel mark on Thursday for the first time in over five years, underscoring a remarkable drop of over 40 percent since early June."

"A coalition of environmental groups reminded President Obama Monday that they want him to set set strong standard for coal ash storage."

"North Dakota regulators on Tuesday ordered producers pumping oil from the Bakken shale field to begin removing flammable natural gas liquids from their product before shipment in an effort to prevent deadly explosions involving trains."

"A new peer-reviewed analysis of sources of leaks in natural gas drilling and well operations strongly bolsters growing calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to settle on regulations cutting wasteful, harmful emissions of methane from both new and existing oil and natural gas wells."

"WESTLAKE, La. — Stacey Ryan already knows where he'll be buried."

"Regulators in the United States knew they had to act fast. A train hauling 2 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota had exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. Now they had to assure Americans a similar disaster wouldn’t happen south of the border, where the U.S. oil boom is sending highly volatile crude oil every day over aging, often defective rails in vulnerable railcars."

"During their careers as oil and gas inspectors for the Texas Railroad Commission, Fred Wright and Morris Kocurek earned merit raises, promotions and praise from their supervisors. ... But they may have done their jobs too well for the industry’s taste—and for their own agency’s."

"BERKELEY -- Oil trains that could roll through some Bay Area cities on their way to a Central Coast refinery will not carry volatile Bakken crude, but another type that comes with equally dire threats to the environment and public safety, environmentalists warn."

"A coalition of activists on Tuesday protested outside the office of the federal Bureau of Land Management in Reno to decry an auction of huge tracts of public land for private oil and gas exploration that they claim damages the environment and guzzles water in a time of drought."