Greenwire

A Western Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale yesterday generated the second-lowest bid total in three decades, officials said.

The Interior and Transportation departments yesterday announced they will establish a confidential reporting system to track "near misses" in the offshore oil and gas industry: instances where spills or human harm nearly occurred, but were avoided.

The Obama administration is working to resuscitate an already approved solar power project in Southern California that was once projected to be the world's largest but was abandoned after the project's backers went bankrupt.

Federal regulators have launched a new inspection program aimed at determining whether crude traveling by train out of the prolific Bakken Shale play in record-high volumes is moving in compliance with safety regulations, the Transportation Department announced today.

Parts of East Antarctica may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, raising new questions about a region holding the majority of the world's ice, according to a new study.

A remote family cemetery in West Virginia is being threatened by a mountaintop-removal mining operation that has come within 100 feet of the graves, a group of residents claims in a new lawsuit.

BP PLC and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. last week told the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals they should not be penalized under the Clean Water Act for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Five Arkansas residents and two oil companies yesterday settled a hydraulic fracturing lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money.

Environmental groups yesterday filed a lawsuit against U.S. EPA for the agency's decision last year to withdraw a rule that would have required owners of concentrated animal feeding operations to report basic data about their operations.

U.S. EPA is urging the Supreme Court to decline review of whether the agency had the authority to deny part of Texas' air pollution program for when power plants start up, shut down or perform maintenance.

The genetically modified corn planted in a rotation in an effort to protect the crops from pests is failing to ward off rootworms, researchers in Illinois found.

A polar bear at New York's Central Park Zoo known for his neurosis was euthanized earlier this week after officials found he had an inoperable tumor.

The Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed listing the Oregon spotted frog as a "threatened" species and designating more than 68,000 acres as critical habitat in Washington and Oregon.

Nearly half of the money spent fighting wildfires in the West each year goes to battle blazes in California, a study said yesterday as the Rim fire continued to rage in Yosemite National Park.

The National Marine Fisheries Service today announced it will review the status of the endangered North Pacific humpback whale, whose population has rebounded in the past 15 years.

A 60-year-old female National Park Service employee is in critical but stable condition today after having been assaulted and left unconscious at a picnic area restroom yesterday at Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona.

The federal-state panel tasked with overseeing the spending of potentially billions of dollars in fines related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill yesterday unanimously approved its initial plan for restoring the Gulf ecosystem and economy.

Ethanol producers are urging U.S. EPA to reject calls by oil industry trade groups to lower next year's biofuels mandate.

U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's visit to Alaska this week drew positive reviews from combatants on both sides of a fierce debate over a planned copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed.

Sometimes Washington, D.C., pomp and circumstance is just that; other times, it's fodder for an attack ad.

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