Energy & Fuel

"ANCHORAGE -- More than four years after Royal Dutch Shell paid $2.8 billion to the federal government for petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea, a company vessel on Sunday morning sent a drill bit into the ocean floor, beginning preliminary work on an exploratory well 70 miles off the northwest coast of Alaska."

"California regulators have not been conducting the intensive workplace-safety inspections of Chevron's Richmond plant and the state's 14 other oil refineries that federal standards call for, a Chronicle investigation shows."

"The long legal battle over Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's controversial 2009 decision to cancel 77 leases near pristine federal lands in Utah may have finally reached its end."

"The case of Julia Trigg Crawford versus the Keystone XL oil pipeline will soon return to the headlines."

"Canada's government finalized much-anticipated regulations on Wednesday for phasing out the country's old coal-fired power plants in a move critics condemned as a watering down of earlier proposals to cut carbon emissions."

"BAGHDAD -- Iraq's Oil Ministry says crude oil exports have averaged 2.565 million barrels a day in August, the highest level in more than three decades."

"The U.S. Justice Department is ramping up its rhetoric against BP PLC for the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, describing in new court papers examples of what it calls 'gross negligence and willful misconduct.'"

"The Obama administration has cleared another hurdle for Shell to drill in Alaska’s Arctic waters – the second in as many days – changing the company’s air pollution limits so its drill ship can operate in the Chukchi Sea."

"PORTLAND, Ore. — About 15 years ago, this environmentally conscious state with a fir tree on its license plates began pushing the idea of making renewable energy from the ocean waves that bob and swell on the Pacific horizon. But then one of the first test-buoy generators, launched with great fanfare, promptly sank. It was not a good start."