The changes affect only new drilling areas and may include greater consideration of environmental impacts, more public review, fewer "categorical exclusions" from environmental review, and more.
"The Agriculture Department will approve for broad use [Tuesday] a genetically modified soybean engineered to contain healthier oils, the opening salvo in a biotech oil fight between DuPont Co. and its rival, Monsanto Co."
"A vote in the U.S. Senate to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from going it alone in battling carbon dioxide emissions will fail this week without new last-minute support, according to congressional and private-sector sources."
"A nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem."
"On Monday, BP said a cap was capturing 11,000 barrels of oil a day from the well. The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil. But is it? With no consensus among experts on how much oil is pouring from the wellhead, it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to assess the containment cap’s effectiveness."
"BP, the very company responsible for the oil spill that is already the worst in U.S. history, has purchased several phrases on search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that the first result that shows up directs information seekers to the company's official website."
"Pennsylvania regulators halted work Monday at dozens of unfinished natural gas wells being drilled by the company whose out-of-control well spewed out explosive gas and polluted water for 16 hours last week."
"A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways."
"More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows."
"Over-reliance on the popular weed-killer Roundup has sped the evolution of weed species resistant to the herbicide, forcing some farmers to return to costlier and less environmentally-friendly methods of controlling crop-destructive infestations."
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