The Congressional Research Service produces expert nonpartisan backgrounders on many subjects of interest to environment and energy journalists. But Congress won't release them. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, you can read them now.
"Congress is going down to the wire on a bill to rewrite federal energy policy."
"An American Indian tribe succeeded Tuesday in getting a federal judge to temporarily stop construction on some, but not all, of a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline, but its broader request still hangs in the balance."
"Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Inc. on Tuesday agreed to buy Houston’s Spectra Energy Corp. in an all-stock deal valued at about $28 billion, creating a major North American energy-infrastructure company at a time when energy-industry operators continue to deal with the fallout from low oil prices."
"Jake Bowen slips slowly down a telephone pole, his boots fixed with little metal spears to grip the wood. 'It's just like starting all over again, but I figure a couple of years the money will start rolling in better,' he says, his face dripping with sweat from the Kentucky humidity. 'It has to be better on my health. I won't be breathing in the coal dust and the rock dust no more.'"
"Enbridge Energy Partners announced Thursday it will delay its controversial proposed Sandpiper oil pipeline through northern Minnesota."
"An earthquake struck northern Oklahoma early Saturday morning, rattling houses and waking residents in the region around Pawnee, about 74 miles north of Oklahoma City. Preliminary measurements show the quake had a magnitude of 5.6 — believed to be one of the strongest in state history."
"On September 3, the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they protested against the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction."
"Conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking to force Drummond Company to clean up its Maxine Mine, an underground coal mine that has not produced coal in decades, but which the Riverkeeper group says is still leaching mine waste and other pollutants into the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River."
"One coal-fired power plant in Colorado will shut down and part of a second plant will stop operating under an agreement that will make deep cuts in air pollution but cost at least 90 jobs over the next decade, officials said Thursday."
