After a judge refused to reverse most of the secrecy ruling around the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster caused by Massey Energy's safety violations, including indictment of the company's former CEO, media outlets appealed. Now a coalition of many more media groups, led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the secrecy ruling as unconstitutional.
For decades, U.S. politicians have made energy independence a patriotic platitude — with one result being a ban on exporting crude oil produced in the U.S. Now some oil companies are getting exceptions to the export ban for a product called "condensate," and the Commerce Department won't say why. So a coalition of environmental groups have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out.
News media and open-government groups across the country will field events March 15-21, 2015, to emphasize the importance of freedom of information to democratic government. Here is a short preliminary list of some major Sunshine Week events already scheduled.
After a February 16, 2015, oil train derailment and explosion in West Virginia, new concerns have arisen over the public's right to know about the dangers oil trains pose to communities. Now trackside communities have some data and maps to help them protect themselves. Image: AP Photo/ Office of the Governor of West Virginia, Steven Wayne Rotsch.
"In March 1957, as Elvis was buying Graceland and the Soviets were preparing to shock the world with Sputnik, Robert F. Wagner, the famously cautious mayor of New York, was having trouble taking a stand."
""The Supreme Court today ruled that Nebraska "recklessly gambled" in taking more water from the Republican River than it was allowed. A majority of the justices held that Nebraska knowingly violated an interstate compact governing the river, depriving Kansas of water that should have flowed over the states' border."
"A key Democratic lawmaker is seeking an expanded inquiry into whether fossil-fuel companies have been secretly underwriting the research of some of the country’s most prominent scientific skeptics of climate change."
"An oil refinery strike continues to spread across California, Texas, and elsewhere across the US. It is now the largest US oil refinery strike in nearly 35 years."
"NEW YORK – Cleaning up widespread corruption in the water supply industry is crucial to avert looming water conflicts born of desperation, warns a new United Nations report based on case studies in 10 countries.
“In many places … corruption is resulting in the hemorrhaging of precious financial resources,” siphoning an estimated 30 percent of funds earmarked for water and sanitation-related improvements, the report states.
"Oil and gas companies hoping to drill in the Atlantic Ocean will have to contend with a new federal proposal to declare waters off the Carolinas and Georgia as critical for endangered whales."
