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Lefty protesters have scored another (temporary) victory: The Obama administration has decided to delay its decision on building the Keystone XL pipeline until, most likely, after the next election. More »
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President Obama announced that he'll pull (very nearly) all 41,000 remaining U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of the year, fulfilling his earliest campaign promise and finally wrapping this whole debacle up. This is fine news. More »
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One of President Michele Bachmann's plans for beefing up American energy independence would be to drill the Everglades. Again, that's "drill the Everglades," as a supposed means of extracting mass quantities of fossil fuels. This idea may be just terrible enough to disgust some of her fellow Tea Partiers. More »
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Former New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, who became a national sensation after saying "the rent is too damn high" many times in one debate last year, has concocted a clever self-marketing strategy. He takes his famous "the ___ is too damn high" formulation and fills the blank with whatever corporations pay him to fill it with. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5801769&view=rss&microfeed=true Libyan rebels today are expected to load up a tanker with crude for the first time near Tobruk, with the first shipment expected to be worth $100 million. That should buy a decent amount of weapons. More »
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I realize we have a lot on our worrying plates, between all the tsunamis and Qaddaffis dominating the news these days—but if I could just momentarily direct your hopelessness in the direction of the adorable, oil-soaked rockhopper penguins above, I'd be much obliged. These faces are the innocent victims of yet another disaster that unfolded Tuesday on Nightingale Island, part of a South Atlantic archipelago located halfway between Argentina and South Africa. More »
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Bracing for a planned "Day of Rage" tomorrow, Saudi Arabia's scumbag foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said that the ruling family will "cut off any finger" that is raised against it. At a press conference yesterday, he told reporters: More »
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Over the last several years, Libya has transformed itself from regional pariah into a country where foreign leaders are begging to pose for a grip-and-grin with Brother Leader Muammar el-Qaddafi. How did this happen? More »
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An Ecuadorean judge yesterday ordered Chevron to pay—wait for it—$8.6 billion, for polluting the Amazon region. It's one of the biggest environmental judgments ever, if not the biggest. It comes after the case had dragged on for 17 years. More »
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More great news from the wonderful world of Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia is running out of oil! According to a former top Saudi oil executive, as recorded in State Department cables between 2007 and 2009, "Peak Oil" — the pinch point at which global petroleum production reaches its maximum capacity — is a very real problem that we're rapidly approaching. More »
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According to the state the Mississippi, guess who's stiffing victims of the Gulf oil spill? The state's Attorney General wrote yesterday that thanks to "sweeping deficiencies and violations of law," BP is allegedly "underpaying" legitimate claims. Surprised? [Bloomberg] More »
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Just two weeks after ex-Yukos Oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to another six years in Russian prison, BP pulled a share swap, exchanging $7.8 billion of stock in the company holding Yukos' assets for a 9.5 percent stake. Convenient! More »
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A "criminal gang" trying to steal fuel punctured an oil pipeline in Mexico on Sunday, sending rivers of oil through the streets of the small village of San Martin Texmelucan and causing a massive explosion that killed 28 people. [BBC] More »
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Have you, too, been itchy to journey miles-deep into the ocean for "black gold" again? Well good news: the Obama administration plans to lift its deep-water drilling moratorium very soon, alongside new safety rules! Mmm, can't wait to ignore those. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5662077&view=rss&microfeed=true Early reports of a slick spreading from that disabled oil rig are not true. More »
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An offshore rig to the West of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site has exploded. Luckily, it was non-producing and there are no reported deaths. But man, oil companies really shouldn't have listened to that sinister Explode-O-Rig 5000™ salesman. [NYT] More »
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Inspired by his concern for the future of our planet, Akinori Ito of the Blest Corporation has invented something truly amazing and potentially game-changing for all of us: a machine that converts plastic garbage into oil. It's truly incredible. More »
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Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former oil lobbyist, thinks that oil remaining in the Gulf is a-okay, poison-wise. It's fine! Really. And if any water critters get smothered in it, well, toothpaste would have had the same effect. More »
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[Tesla owners? Smug? LOL. A motorist out driving his or her Tesla—that's an electric car brand, for those of you who take the subway—had a message for fellow drivers. Pic via Reddit.] More »
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[Testing of BP's magical new containment cap has been put on hold, and oil is again flowing freely into the Gulf. But don't worry, America: The oil company is well prepared for disasters like this one. Image via AP] More »
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U Street in Washington D.C. was covered in "a greasy mess that smelled like vomit" on Wednesday. Was it the sickening, bilious waste of the United States Senate, come to life? No, it was just "used restaurant oil." [WTOP] More »
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Remember when BP was perceived—thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising—as the "green" oil company? (That was only a couple months ago). Now, Shell is seeking to grab that totally made-up title. With advertising! More »
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Yesterday, U.S. District Judge and oil investor Martin Feldman blocked President Obama's "blanket, generic, indeed punitive" offshore oil drilling moratorium. But Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will seek a stay on the ruling, pending an appeal by the administration. [NYT] More »
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Texas Rep. Joe Barton, who's more or less an employee of the oil industry, delivered an incredible statement to comical BP CEO Tony Hayward this morning, apologizing for the White House's $20 billion dollar "shakedown" fund. More »
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It's been one month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, and oil is still leaking at an astonishing rate. Entire state economies might be crushed, and whole ecosystems wiped out. So whose fault is it? More »
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Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador, NYRB contributor, and persona non grata at the UN is ready for home state politics. His experience advising Iraqi Kurds in shady oil deals should set him up for a lawmaking career. [AP] More »
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On last night's Daily Show, Jon pointed out just how screwed we might be with this oil spill. Apparently at this point, containment of the spill is now completely anagram based. More »
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Via Twitter BP released a short underwater video of oil and gas gushing into the ocean thanks to the petroleum giant's oil rig accident last month. It's amazing to watch, until you realize it's absolute destruction. [Yahoo!] More »
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Since nobody knows what else to do, Stephen's got his own solution for BP: a contraption he likes to call the "Oil Containment Solution Randomizer." No word on whether or not this may actually help the cause. More »
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BP tried putting a box over the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. That didn't work. But now they have a new idea! They're just going to, like, you know, bung it up with mud and stuff. [AP] More »
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There goes Rush Limbaugh's theory that environmentalist terrorists blew up the Deepwater Horizon oil rig — a team investigating the explosion suspect a bubble of deep sea methane gas, which ignited at the surface, was to blame. [AP] More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5534085&view=rss&microfeed=true BP's latest wheeze is to place a "100-tonne concrete-and-steel box" over the leaking oil well. Which seems ludicrously, childishly, simple as an idea, but is apparently not. "We haven't done this before," said BP spokesman David Nicholas, according to the Guardian. "It's very complex and we can't guarantee it [will work]." More »
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With Americans already pissed about the Gulf oil spill, Shell is worried that a legal challenge by a bunch of hippie environmentalists will crush the company's chances of ruining the Arctic Ocean. They're asking the court to hurry up. [AP] More »
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Secessionist governor of Texas Rick Perry warned that it was too early to blame BP for the oil spill, because they give Texas lots of money and sometimes disasters happen that "are acts of God that cannot be prevented." [DMN] More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5530440&view=rss&microfeed=true Eleven workers are missing after an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5521670&view=rss&microfeed=true Those wily pirates are at it again, this time grabbing a South Korean super tanker loaded with Iraqi oil bound for the US. Double steal. More »
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At long last, the president has a plan that will prove his commitment to bipartisanship. Today he will introduce a new offshore oil and gas drilling proposal along the East Coast. Thankfully, the Jersey Shore will be spared. [NYT] More »
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This graph is the key to everything and it will soon be a book from HarperCollins. ("Everything" means Jann Wenner, Baby Boomers, mass culture, and the death of liberal consensus and middle class stability.) [Overthinking It via Colin via Maura.] More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5402172&view=rss&microfeed=true A leading energy economist says that worldwide oil supplies are rapidly running out. More »
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It's a sad day for America, and for wind: T. Boone Pickens, the vile old conservative billionaire oilman who somehow sold himself as an important environmentalist last year, is abandoning his giant wind farm plan. More »
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