"Federal regulators are unlikely to step up enforcement of potential water contamination cases linked to natural gas drilling -- despite new concerns about water safety -- given a lack of political will and limited resources to pursue such cases, analysts said."

"ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russian investigators have dropped charges against all but one of the 30 crew of a Greenpeace ship, who were accused of hooliganism following a protest outside a Russian oil rig in the Arctic, the group said Wednesday."

"If companies want to continue storing giant mounds of petroleum coke on Chicago's Southeast Side, they soon will have to start doing so indoors."

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will 'soon' pardon one of his sharpest critics — jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky — and said that a newly enacted amnesty law would free imprisoned Greenpeace activists and two members of the punk band Pussy Riot."

"This coming Sunday, Dec. 22, marks five years since the Kingston Coal Plant's ash dam in Tennessee ruptured, sending more than a billion gallons of toxic sludge into homes, onto farmland, and into the Emory and Clinch Rivers in Roane County - one of the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Five years later, we're still waiting - and pushing - for the Environmental Protection Agency to put in place long-overdue protections to prevent more coal ash disasters."

"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday struck down portions of a law that stripped some of the powers municipalities have to decide where the booming natural gas industry can operate."

"HOUSTON — Nearly four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion that left 11 dead, a former low-level engineer at BP was found guilty on Wednesday of obstruction of justice for deleting messages during a federal investigation into how much oil leaked."

"WASHINGTON — The honeybees that pollinate one-third of Americans’ daily diet are dying, and in the eyes of some environmentalists one culprit may be a decades-old Environmental Protection Agency system."

"The Interior Department will not be held in contempt over its actions in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill after the Supreme Court declined on Monday to review an appeals court ruling in the government's favor."