"When the World Trade Organization ruled this week that China must again start exporting rare earth elements key to manufacturing high tech and defense products, traders and the markets that need the materials rejoiced. But less happy were the Chinese who claim complying will hurt the environment."

"In response to a shareholder resolution, ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. energy company, for the first time has agreed to publish a Carbon Asset Risk report on the company website. The report will show investors how ExxonMobil plans for a future where market forces and climate regulations will make some of its oil and gas reserves unburnable."

"Energy companies have been under increasing pressure from shareholder activists in recent years to warn investors of the risks that stricter limits on carbon emissions would place on their business. On Thursday, a shareholder group said that it had won its biggest prize yet, when Exxon Mobil became the first oil and gas producer to agree to publish that information by the end of the month."

"You might expect the biggest lease owner in Canada's oil sands, or tar sands, to be one of the international oil giants, like Exxon Mobil or Royal Dutch Shell. But that isn't the case. The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David."

"Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is being welcomed back to seek new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico."

"Internal emails between staff at North Carolina's environmental agency suggest state regulators were coordinating with Duke Energy before intervening in efforts by citizens groups trying to sue the company over groundwater pollution leeching from its coal ash dumps."

"The energy giant raised the cash it needed to survive by slashing royalties it paid property owners to drill on their land."

"CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Diminished domestic demand has produced a virtual moratorium on federal coal sales in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, home to the 10 top-producing coal mines in the country."

"CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Duke Energy's CEO says while the company and its shareholders will pay to clean up a coal ash spill in the Dan River, its customers will shoulder the costs of closing the rest of the utility's coal ash ponds across North Carolina."