The fate of Shell’s deep sea oil platform, the Kulluk, captured attention last week when it cut loose in choppy seas and ran aground on Kodiak Island in Alaska. Observers held their breath, waiting to hear if the rig had been damaged and was leaking oil. It wasn’t.
Tags: · Alaska, Arctic seas, Kulluk, oil drilling, Shell Oil
Every year when gas prices rise, politicians and pundits like to play the blame game. On Fox & Friends, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal blamed the Obama administration’s “radical environmental ideology” for high gas prices.
Tags: · gasoline prices, Mass Transit, oil drilling, oil price controls, OtherVoicesBlog, reduce use, US oil drilling
That Republican presidential aspirant Rick Santorum is a climate change denier will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been watching the GOP candidates these past months. Virtually the entire field has expressed doubt that climate change is occurring or that humans have anything to do with it — or both.
But the depth of Santorum’s disdain for climate change science — and for those who’re concerned about environmental risks posed by oil drilling and gas fracking — may ring alarm bells for moderates who think America should address carbon pollution.
Santorum secured a leading spot in the Republican presidential primary contest by finishing a close second to Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses Tuesday.
Known heretofore mainly as the “family values candidate,” he is an “out-and-out denier” of climate change, according to an article in Grist, “Santorum v. Romney: The climate is screwed either way”.
Tags: · Climate Change, climate deniers, Consol Energy, Iowa caucuses, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, natural gas fracking, oil drilling, Pennsylvania senator, positions on climate change, Republican Party climate denial, Rick Santorum, views on climate change
From Green Right Now Reports
Many reports are taking Gov. Rick Perry’s energy plan to task for focusing on dirty fossil fuels and promoting jobs numbers for oil and gas development that crumble upon examination.
The New York Times says Perry’s plan to extend drilling on public lands, in the arctic and the Gulf of Mexico resembles “a wish list for the oil and gas industry” and appears to have been drawn from a study by Wood Mackenzie consultants paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.
The Atlantic reports that Perry is far off the mark when he claims that expanding oil and gas drilling and rolling back EPA regulations would create 1.2 million jobs.
Tags: · EPA, fossil fuel energy, Gov. Rick Perry, Green Energy, greenrightnow.com, natural gas drilling, oil drilling, presidential race, regulation, Renewable Energy, Texas
The state of Alaska has filed a petition in federal court to overturn the Obama administration’s moratorium on drilling in federal waters of the Arctic.
The problem: Interior Department officials insist that no such formal moratorium exists.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, the petition says the Interior Department “arbitrarily and capriciously imposed” a moratorium on drilling in federal waters off Alaska after the Deepwater Horizon disaster “without considering and weighing the potential effects on Alaska, including economic harm to the State of Alaska and Alaska residents.”
Interior Department officials, however, insist that the drilling moratorium imposed on deepwater Gulf of Mexico operations is separate from a policy decision to take a go-slow approach on new Arctic offshore drilling.
Tags: · Alaska drilling moratorium, Alaska offshore drilling, Deep Horizon, deep water drilling, Department of the Interior, Fossil Fuels, Gulf oil spill, oil drilling, Royal Dutch Shell, Shell Oil
Continued uneasiness about the safety of offshore oil drilling may lead to delays in Royal Dutch Shell’s plans to proceed with five planned wells in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.
“We will be making that decision in the several months ahead,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at an Anchorage news conference, citing pending reports on offshore drilling safety and the results of an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The review process could thwart Shell’s plans to prepare a drilling program for the brief 2011 open-water season.
Tags: · Arctic Alaska, Arctic oil, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Department of the Interior, Fossil Fuels, Gulf oil spill, Inupiat Eskimo, Ken Salazar, oil drilling, Royal Dutch Shell
In a symbolic but moving gesture, the Hands Across the Sands oil drilling protest on Saturday brought out people from Miami to Melbourne to stand in solidarity for clean beaches, and against more offshore oil drilling.
There were events around the world, but the turnout was especially heavy in the U.S., spanning the nation from High Line Park in New York City and Nags Head in North Carolina in the East, to Puget Sound and Los Angeles and several beaches in between on the West Coast. People lined up in Anchorage and Maui.
Tags: · American oil, Bay Area, beaches, BP, Cape May, DelRay Beach, Evanston, Florida, gulf coast, Hands Across the Sands, Los Angeles, Miami, Miami Beach, New Jersey, New York, offshore oil, oil, oil disaster, oil drilling, oil protest, oil spill, Pinellas County, Puget Sound, St. Petersburg, Venice Beach
The message of Hands Across the Sands, its founder likes to say, is simple: Say ‘No’ to oil drilling and ‘Yes’ to clean energy.
To make that point crystal clear, thousands of Americans are expected to line up on beaches tomorrow (June 26) at 11 a.m. to join hands and show their solidarity on that point. The gatherings will last 15 minutes. Organizers will take a photo of the group, and then members will disband, leaving only their footprints behind.
Tags: · Alabama, beach, beaches, BP, BP oil spill, bp spill, Florida, gulf coast, Gulf of Mexico, Hands Across the Sand, Hands Across the Sands, Louisiana, Mississippi, oil, oil drilling
From Green Right Now Reports
New scientific findings on the Greater Sage-Grouse are a “wake-up call” about the bird’s dwindling numbers and its vanishing sagebrush habitat, reports the National Wildlife Federation.
Greater-Sage Grouse (Photo: U.S. Geological Survey)
Last week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), announced that the Greater Sage-Grouse will have to wait in line for Endangered Species Act protection behind higher-priority species. The agency deemed the bird’s status to be “warranted but precluded,” a designation that means the bird qualifies for Endangered Species Act protection (it is “warranted”) but it will not be acted upon immediately.
Tags: · energy development, Fossil Fuels, greater sage-grouse, oil drilling, sagebrush, Western U.S.
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift