Gas guzzling now A-OK, Trump administration says

Oil well (photo by John Hill)Following news that the EPA dropped plans to keep boosting fuel-economy standards, it quietly dropped another bombshell: It's now fine to guzzle gas. Burn as much as you want. According to an AP report carried by the Detroit News, the Energy Department quietly released the news online in a memo in July in support of freezing fuel economy...

ExxonMobil leaves conservative anti-climate lobbying group

ExxonMobil oil refinery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by WClarke [CC BY-SA 4.0]Following a public spat over climate change legislation, oil giant ExxonMobil has pulled its membership from the Koch brothers-backed anti-climate-change lobbying group, American Legislative Exchange Council. Neither ExxonMobil nor ALEC has commented publicly on the reasons for the company's departure, but the move comes after ExxonMobil had an...

Oil refiners express skepticism, worry over electric cars

ExxonMobil oil refinery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by WClarke [CC BY-SA 4.0]A recent survey by the World Refining Association shows some oil industry executives are becoming concerned about how the proliferation of electric cars may affect their business. A core of respondents, however, seem unconvinced that electric cars are a threat. In the survey published late last month, 61.1 percent of professionals in the oil...

Oil prices could double by 2020, boosting electric car sales

Oil well (photo by John Hill)Despite short term peaks and valleys, and a recent agreement by OPEC to ease production restrictions, the overall trend in oil prices is on the rise. That's the conclusion of Bernstein research, an investment research company, which forecast last week that oil could hit $150 a barrel by 2020, just a couple of years from now, according to an...

World Bank will stop funding oil, gas exploration in 2019

Coal-fired Nanticoke Generating Station, Ontario, Canada, now being converted to 44-MW solar farmIt's not just the world automotive industry that's grappling with rapid changes brought about by the need to reduce the effects of climate change. The world's fossil-fuel extraction, refining, and delivery industries are also faced with the reality that two centuries of burning their core products hurts the planet and has already exacerbated...

Texas fossil-fuel industry made state more vulnerable to hurricane

Oil field (Image: Flickr user johnny choura, used under CC license)Hurricane Harvey will go down as one of the most destructive and costliest natural disasters in the United States. While the storm has dissipated, with this week's attention focused on Hurricane Irma, the effects and damage tolls will last for years—and one thing already seems clear: Texas' dependence on the fossil-fuel industry poses an...