Air pollution regulators in the Bay area have voted overwhelmingly to approve new rules that impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gasses.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit. Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties […]

As oil climbed to a humungous record of $135 a barrel, yesterday US senators once again lined up Big Oil’s biggest executives and pummeled them with questions.
“Where is the corporate conscience?” Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies, who have earned a whopping $36 billion […]

The US is starting to break its “addiction” to foreign oil as high prices, more efficient cars, and the use of ethanol significantly cut the share of its oil imports for the first time since the late seventies.
According to a report in today’s Financial Times, the country’s foreign oil dependency is expected to fall from […]

You scratch my back and …
The latest moves to ease restrictions on offshore drilling off the US coast is being pushed by 17 Republican senators who have received $3 million total in campaign contributions from individuals and political action committees affiliated with the oil and gas industry since January 1, 2007.
The Republican energy plan, sponsored […]

Democrats in the US Senate yesterday called for a temporary special tax on oil companies’ profits and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package.
The proposed 25 percent profits tax would apply just to oil company earnings above what would be considered “reasonable” and only if those […]