It was two years ago today that the Deepwater Horizon—a top-of-the-line offshore drilling rig owned by BP and run by Transocean—experienced a sudden burst of gas from a three-mile long well its crew was drilling in the Gulf …
Oil
Nearly Two Years On, Did the BP Oil Spill Have to Happen to BP?
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill seems to divide people into two categories: those who can’t forget, and those who refuse to remember. In the first camp are Gulf Coast residents and environmentalists who say the region still …
Under Pressure from High Gas Prices, Obama Looks to Streamline Domestic Oil Production
Whenever President Obama isn’t talking about cracking down on subsidies for Big Oil, he’s usually hyping all the work his own Administration has done to support domestic oil production. He has a point—U.S. oil production has …
Crude World
Every day, the world burns through more than 87 million barrels of oil—and every year, that number gets bigger and bigger. We use oil to power our cars, planes and trucks; our tanks, bombers and rockets. Oil is irreplacable, …
There Will Be Oil—and That’s the Problem
I have the cover story this week in the dead-tree/living table TIME, on the future of oil (available here to subscribers). Gas prices have dominated the political conversation for weeks—at least until the Supreme Court started …
Obama’s Energy Strategy: All of the Above—and a Lot of Oil
Why was President Obama speaking at the small town of Cushing, Oklahoma this morning? Whether or not you know the answer to that questions probably predicts where you stand on energy policy. Cushing is the Pipelines Crossroads of …
The Big Republican Lie on Gas Prices
I’m a pretty even-tempered writer by nature. I like to withhold judgement for as long as possible. Even though I’m an environment writer, that attitude sometimes gets me in trouble with environmentalists who want me to come down …
Oil: Should President Obama Tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Barack Obama likes to say that as President of the United States, he doesn’t “bluff” when it comes to foreign policy. But when it comes to energy, it looks like Obama might be willing to try the occasional fake out.
Keystone: How Bill McKibben Turned a Pipeline into an Environmental Rallying Point
The proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline is the environmental issue that will not go away. More than a month after President Obama rejected the initial plan for the pipeline—which would have moved some 830,000 barrels a day …