Quick Key Facts What Is Oil? Crude oil or petroleum is a liquid fossil fuel. We use it to generate electricity, heat our homes, and fuel our cars. Petroleum products supply about 35% of energy in the U.S., with transportation accounting for the largest portion. Burning fossil fuels like oil releases greenhouse gases into the […]
By Dana Drugmand Norway’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled not to overturn the Norwegian government’s approval of new licenses for offshore oil drilling in the fragile Arctic region. The ruling – a culmination of four years of high-profile litigation in a case challenging continued fossil fuel production on climate change grounds — came as a […]
By Jessica Corbett Climate action advocates and wildlife defenders celebrated Monday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s approval of Liberty, a proposed offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters that opponents warned would endanger local communities, animals, and the environment. “This is a huge victory for polar […]
By Andrea Germanos The federal government and fossil fuel industry announced at a legal hearing Thursday that seismic blasting will not be carried out in the Atlantic Ocean this year—and possibly not in the near future either—a development welcomed by conservation groups who lobbied forcefully against what they said would have been an “unjustified acoustic […]
The federal government is looking into the details from the longest running oil spill in U.S. history, and it’s looking far worse than the oil rig owner let on, as The New York Times reported. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico received little public attention when it happened in September 2004, but it […]
By Julia Conley Three Greenpeace campaigners halted a British Petroleum oil rig off the coast of Scotland on Sunday as it prepared to leave for the North Sea to drill oil wells. Carrying enough provisions to last several days aboard the rig, the climate action advocates pulled up to the 27,000-ton vessel in small boats […]
The Trump administration announced Thursday it was rolling back offshore oil drilling regulations put in place after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest ocean spill in U.S. history. Officials announced changes to the Well Control Rule on the Louisiana coast, not far from where the 2010 oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and […]
The Justice Department is looking into whether former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to investigators at the Department of Interior, The Washington Post reports. Anonymous sources tell the Post that investigators at the Interior’s inspector general’s office raised the issue with the DOJ after suspecting Zinke may have lied during questioning over his real estate […]
By Andy Rowell It may be a New Year, but there is an old oil spill that keeps on spilling. The trouble is that you will probably have never have heard about the spill. But you need to know. Because, for more than 14 years, some 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of oil have leaked daily […]
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