"North Dakota regulators on Tuesday ordered producers pumping oil from the Bakken shale field to begin removing flammable natural gas liquids from their product before shipment in an effort to prevent deadly explosions involving trains."

"A new peer-reviewed analysis of sources of leaks in natural gas drilling and well operations strongly bolsters growing calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to settle on regulations cutting wasteful, harmful emissions of methane from both new and existing oil and natural gas wells."

"It is no secret that the world’s oceans are swimming with plastic debris — the first floating masses of trash were discovered in the 1990s. But researchers are starting to get a better sense of the size and scope of the problem."

"A slight increase in air temperature over the past half-century has caused waters to warm more than two degrees in tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay, a change that could reduce the expected benefits of the multibillion-dollar bay cleanup plan and eventually alter the behaviors of marine animals, a new study says."

"WESTLAKE, La. — Stacey Ryan already knows where he'll be buried."

"Regulators in the United States knew they had to act fast. A train hauling 2 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota had exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. Now they had to assure Americans a similar disaster wouldn’t happen south of the border, where the U.S. oil boom is sending highly volatile crude oil every day over aging, often defective rails in vulnerable railcars."

"During their careers as oil and gas inspectors for the Texas Railroad Commission, Fred Wright and Morris Kocurek earned merit raises, promotions and praise from their supervisors. ... But they may have done their jobs too well for the industry’s taste—and for their own agency’s."

"Congressional appropriators [Tuesday] night unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill to fund most government agencies through the end of the year, making slight cuts to U.S. EPA while boosting spending at the Departments of Energy and the Interior."

"A new study looked at the health impacts on adults drinking a liquid from bottles lined with BPA, and found that the chemical not only made it into their bodies but seems to have caused a significant increase in blood pressure."

"A rust-colored shorebird known for a nearly 20,000-mile migration will now receive federal protection, setting the stage for states to coordinate preservation plans for the dwindling species."