By Jeremy Hodges, Lauren Leatherby and Kartikay Mehrotra
May 24, 2018

In the global fight against climate change, one tool is proving increasingly popular: litigation.

From California to the Philippines, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing the biggest polluters and national governments over the effects of climate change at a break-neck pace.

“The courts are our last, best hope at this moment of irreversible harm to our planet and life on it,” said Julia Olson, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, a legal challenge center in the U.S. that is involved in climate change litigation across 13 countries, including the U.S., Pakistan and Uganda. read more

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS: MARCH 21, 2018

HOUSTON — In a setback to Trump administration efforts to increase offshore oil production, the industry responded with only modest interest on Wednesday in a federal auction covering a record 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico.

Companies bid on only 1 percent of the acreage, and the winning bids yielded a mere $125 million for the government.

The results reflected broad uncertainty among oil executives that global oil prices can remain at current levels over $60 a barrel, as well as a general preference for drilling in onshore shale fields that require smaller investments and are less risky. read more

A pump jack in a Permian Basin oil field in West Texas. The area has been a focus of the shale drilling boom. Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS: JAN. 28, 2018

HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.

The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.

Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques. read more

October 06, 2017, 04:44:00 PM EDT By Zacks Equity Research

Two major Californian cities – San Francisco and Oakland – have filed lawsuits against five oil and energy super majors in late September. The cities have taken legal action against Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell plc, ExxonMobil Corp. and BP p.l.c.

The companies have been accused of causing an adverse impact on the climate, resulting in global warming. The plaintiffs hold these fossil fuel companies accountable for rising sea levels, changing landscapes, higher global temperatures and increased risk of storms and droughts. read more

By Farron Cousins: 15 August 2017

For many years, a standard talking point from the fossil fuel industry and those who speak on the industry’s behalf has been that natural gas is a cleaner alternative to conventional energy sources like coal and oil. This talking point is at least partially responsible for many people—including former President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz—believing that natural gas can act as a “bridge fuel” in the eventual shift from coal and oil to renewable sources of energy. read more

Karolin Schaps and Susanna Twidale: AUGUST 1, 2017 / 10:34 AM

LONDON (Reuters) – Some European oil majors have made inroads into the emerging U.S. offshore wind energy market, aiming to leverage their experience of deepwater development and the crowded offshore wind arena at home.

Late entrants to the offshore wind game in Europe, which began with a project off Denmark 25 years ago and is now approaching maturity, they are looking across the Atlantic at what they view as a huge and potentially lucrative new market. read more

By Ed Crooks of the Finacial Times: January 13, 2017

In the 1930s many newspapers carried impressively detailed diagrams showing France’s defences along the German border, described by Popular Mechanix and Inventions magazine as the “world’s greatest underground fortifications”. By the end of May 1940, Hitler had demonstrated that while the Maginot Line might indeed be an engineering marvel, it was also irrelevant, as his panzer divisions swept past it through Belgium and into France. Last year’s agreement between leading oil-producing countries to curb their output had something of the same feel about it this week. read more

Extracts from a weekly briefing by Ed Crooks: January 6, 2017

In our predictions for 2016, we were right that oil would end the year over $50 – modesty forbids me from mentioning which writer made that forecast – but missed that an agreement between Opec and non-Opec producers would be one of the factors underpinning the price. For 2017 Anjli Raval made the call, arguing that crude was again likely to end the year above $50, on the grounds that a lower price would still be too low to enable sufficient investment in production to meet demand. read more

By Chris Tomlinson, Business Columnist: Dec 22, 2016

Count on politicians to be political.

President Barack Obama banned oil drilling along the Arctic coast and in the Atlantic from Virginia to Maine on Tuesday. Citing questionable authority under an obscure 1953 law, he means to keep any oil found in either of these coastal areas in the ground.

Environmentalists cheered and oil lobbyists jeered. Both will certainly waste a lot of time and electrons writing long tracts of praising and condemning Obama. And then they’ll waste donor funds fighting it out in court. read more

David Blackmon: Contributor. Dec 21, 2016

The hits just keep on coming from our outgoing President. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama took one more of many parting shots at the domestic oil and gas industry at the behest of his supporters in the anti-development lobby, setting aside much of the northeastern Atlantic coast, all U.S. waters off the North Slope of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea and almost all of the federal waters in the adjacent Chukchi Sea “indefinitely off-limits for future oil and gas leasing.” read more

A boat crosses in front of the Transocean Polar Pioneer, a semi-submersible drilling unit that Royal Dutch Shell leases from Transocean Ltd., as it arrives in Port Angeles, Wash., aboard a transport ship after traveling across the Pacific before its eventual Arctic destination in an April 17, 2015 file photo. The federal government says it will ban offshore oil and gas licensing in Arctic waters, a measure to be reviewed every five years. 

The Canadian Press: DECEMBER 20, 2016 01:23 PM

CALGARY – The federal government announced Tuesday plans to ban offshore oil and gas licensing in the Arctic, citing the need to protect the environment from future energy development, but the move was largely dismissed by industry observers as a weak gesture that won’t harm their interests. read more

By CORAL DAVENPORT

President Obama announced on Tuesday what he called a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic Seaboard as he tried to nail down an environmental legacy that cannot quickly be reversed by Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Obama invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he said gives him the authority to act unilaterally. While some presidents have used that law to temporarily protect smaller portions of federal waters, Mr. Obama’s declaration of a permanent drilling ban on portions of the ocean floor from Virginia to Maine and along much of Alaska’s coast is breaking new ground. The declaration’s fate will almost certainly be decided by the federal courts. read more

by: Shawn Donnan in Washington and Andrew Ward in London: 21 December 2016

US President Barack Obama has set the stage for a legal battle over drilling for oil and gas in Arctic seas after declaring a huge swath of those waters “indefinitely” off limits to exploration as part of a joint move with Canada.

Royal Dutch Shell, long at the forefront of exploration in Alaska, abandoned its drilling campaign there in 2015 after failing to strike oil. The Anglo-Dutch group had spent $7bn in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas since 2007, or about 20 per cent of its exploration budget. read more

By William Yardley: 18 Nov 2016

The Obama administration said Friday it was banning offshore oil drilling in the Arctic through 2022, a move that prompted widespread praise from conservation groups but raised questions over how long the decision will stand just two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

A new five-year leasing program prohibits any drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas — an environmental battleground in recent years —and also blocks expansion in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while allowing some new leasing in the Gulf of Mexico. read more

By Ed Crooks: November 19, 2016

The last rites have been read over the Age of Oil a few times recently, but this week the International Energy Agency suggested there was still plenty of life left in it yet.

In its 2016 World Energy Outlook, the IEA argued that even if the Paris climate agreement were fully implemented, demand for oil would keep rising until at least 2040.

The message was reassuring for oil producers worried that “peak demand” might condemn them to stagnation or decline, or even put them out of business. There was colder comfort, however, in a warning from Wood Mackenzie that big oil companies risked being left behind in the transition to low-carbon energy. read more

By The Motley Fool  Nov 14, 2016

Donald Trump’s views on climate change may provide a boost to oil production in the US. He stated in his campaign that the US was being disadvantaged by rules and regulations aimed to prevent (or at least slow down) climate change. This could signal a more positive attitude from the US government towards oil and gas companies over the medium term.

Although there’s no certainty that Trump will follow through on his campaign policies when he becomes President, it seems likely that he’ll be less positive about battling the effects of climate change than Barack Obama. This could be bad news for Shell(LSE: RDSB). read more

By Ed Crooks, November 11, 2016

“Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires,” said Napoleon. The same is true of elections.

Donald Trump may have come slightly behind Hillary Clinton in the popular vote for the presidency, but his convincing victory in the electoral college will give him the ability to reshape the energy industry in the US and around the world.

His hand will be strengthened by Republican control of Congress. Parts of Mr Trump’s agenda will face resistance in Congress, but his energy policy is unlikely to be one of those areas. His support for oil, gas and coal, his commitment to deregulation and his rejection of climate policy are all well aligned with mainstream Republican thinking. read more

By Ed Crooks: June 17, 2016

This week has brought evidence of contrasting short-term and long-term trends in the oil market. In the short term, demand and supply are both turning out to be stronger than many had expected. The IEA revised up its forecast for oil demand growth this year in its monthly oil market report, but added that rising production would mean global oversupply could persist into 2017.

There are early indications of an upturn in activity in the US shale industry, still faint so far, but ominous for anyone relying on a sharp rebound in crude. And Iran said its oil production had reached 3.8m barrels per day, confirming the strong growth following the lifting of sanctions that was already visible last month. Iran’s oil exports have tripled since late 2015. read more

By Ed Crooks: Friday 18 March 2016

Oil continued to creep up this week with Brent going past $42 per barrel, its highest level since early December. Crude was a beneficiary of the wider upturn in markets, which pushed the S&P 500 index briefly back up above its level at the start of the year. The positive correlation between share prices and oil prices seems to be alive and well.

Suggestions that the US Federal Reserve is in no hurry to raise interest rates gave a boost to crude and other markets. Oil was also helped by reports that Opec ministers had at last agreed to hold a meeting with leading non-Opec producers such as Russia, in an attempt to make some progress with their much-discussed, little-implemented production freeze. read more

To many analysts, it looked like Odum was pushed into leaving.

Steven Mufson March 11, 2016

Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil, was attending a meeting of the parent company’s executive committee in Singapore when word trickled in that an exploration well drilled in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea — the crowning step in a multi-year $7 billion quest — was a dry hole.

Maybe not bone dry. In a recent interview, Odum wouldn’t say. But in the oil business glossary, a dry hole is one that can’t pay off commercially, and Shell’s hole definitely qualified. The parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, abruptly dropped any further drilling — a setback for the industry, though a relief for environmentalists.

For years, they had fought a vigorous, litigious and politically intense battle over the Chukchi. Meanwhile Shell, lured by potentially rich rewards, had overcome a couple of embarrassing rig mishaps at sea and patiently navigated the courts and the Obama administration’s permitting process. Now, geology had rendered its verdict. read more

By Ed Crooks: February 5, 2016

Earnings reports from the largest listed oil companies have this week given a series of seismograph readings on the upheaval in the crude market. The implications for investors, employees and suppliers are grim. Worse, those earnings were all recorded in a period when oil and gas prices were significantly higher than they are now.

In a run of generally grim reports, BP’s was perhaps the worst: in 2015 it made a $5.2bn loss, the largest in its history. ConocoPhillips of the US, which after spinning off its refining business in 2012 became the world’s largest pure exploration and production company, was another standout, cutting its dividend by 66 per cent just two months after promising that the payout would be its “highest priority”. read more

A months-long investigation shows how the energy giant pressured the Interior Department during the company’s gung-ho Arctic push—and got most of what it wanted (except oil).

By Barry Yeoman: December 08, 2015

Last May, four months before the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell suspended exploration in offshore Alaska, Christopher Putnam needed to get something off his chest.

Putnam is 44, originally from Texas, a trained wildlife biologist who also served as an Army infantry sergeant during the Iraq War. For almost six years he has worked in Alaska for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, protecting marine mammals. It has been his job to ensure that Shell’s plans to drill more than 60 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea—the wild Arctic water between Alaska and Siberia—wouldn’t harm Pacific walruses, particularly the juveniles, calves, and nursing mothers that dominate the Chukchi during the drilling season. read more

by Veselin Valchev: Tuesday, 17 Nov 2015, 11:18 GMT

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (LON:RDSA) announced yesterday that the boss of the firm’s Canada division, Lorraine Mitchelmore, is stepping down from the company at the end of 2015, following six years at the helm.

The move comes less than a month after the Anglo-Dutch oil major abandoned its 80,000 barrel per day Carmon Creek thermal oil sands project in Alberta, amid a reshuffle of the firm’s portfolio.

A spokesman for Shell Canada said Mitchelmore’s departure had nothing to do with the decision to shelve Carmon Creek. read more

“President Obama is the first world leader to reject a project because of its effect on the climate,” said Bill McKibben, founder of the activist group 350.org, which led the campaign against the pipeline. “That gives him new stature as an environmental leader, and it eloquently confirms the five years and millions of hours of work that people of every kind put into this fight.”

By CORAL DAVENPORT: NOV. 6, 2015

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change. read more

Markets | Fri Nov 6, 2015 3:38pm EST

By Mike De Souza

Nov 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. rejection of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was driven in part by protesters who are increasingly frustrated with inaction on climate change, Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said on Friday.

Speaking at the launch of Shell’s new carbon capture and storage project in Alberta, the first Canadian project of its kind in the oil sands industry, van Beurden said anti-fossil-fuel movements are growing because of anxiety and resentment about a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. read more

Shell Canada says Keystone XL was already in uncertainty window

CALGARY: Fri Nov 6, 2015

Royal Dutch Shell PLc said on Friday there are at least three other possible pipeline alternatives to TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL project, which was rejected by U.S. President Barack Obama, and Shell would like to see at least one approved.

“So Keystone has been on for seven years now, so of course, it’s brought into the uncertainty window,” Lorraine Mitchelmore, president of Shell’s Canadian unit, told reporters in Calgary.

(Reporting by Mike De Souza in Calgary; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) read more

By: Micheal Kaufman: Oct 19, 2015

The US Interior Department announced on Friday that it will cancel the auction of 2016 and 2017 natural gas and offshore oil leases in the Arctic Ocean. The auction was scheduled under the Department’s current five-year Chukchi Sea leasing program for 2012–2017. The division cited low crude oil prices and lack of interest from oil companies as the main reason behind its decision.

This news comes a few weeks after Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) withdrew its Arctic drilling plan. The oil giant had spent $7 billion for the Arctic campaign. It said last month that it has dropped its exploration and production (E&P) activities in the Burger prospect of the Chukchi Sea, as it found few traces of oil and natural gas in the region. The company was not satisfied with the drilling results; it had initially expected huge amount of oil traces in the Ocean. Shell has dropped all future plans of Arctic drilling for the foreseeable future. read more

Interior: No more new Arctic oil leases for remainder of Obama’s presidency

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY: Oct 16, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is canceling its plans to sell oil drilling rights in the Arctic Sea through 2017, a remarkable turnaround since expanding drilling by approving new drilling permits for Shell Oil earlier this year.

But Royal Dutch Shell’s decision last month to suspend its oil exploration in offshore Alaskan waters — citing disappointing results from a well in the Chukchi Sea — prompted the Interior Department to cancel further oil leases.

“In light of Shell’s announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. read more

Brian Wingfield and Joe Carroll: BLOOMBERG.COM: 17 October 2015

The U.S. Interior Department effectively halted drilling off Alaska’s coast for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s term by canceling two sales of Arctic oil and gas leases.

The decision comes less than a month after Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it would indefinitely cease exploration in the region as the company didn’t find sufficient quantities of oil or gas in a Chukchi Sea drilling zone.

“In light of Shell’s announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement on Friday. read more

The US government has announced new curbs on oil and gas exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast.

It comes after oil giant Royal Dutch Shell last month stopped its Arctic activity citing “disappointing” tests.

The US interior department said it was cancelling two potential Arctic offshore lease sales and would not extend current leases.

The announcement has been welcomed by environmentalists.

Miyoko Sakashita, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the decision was “great for the Arctic and its polar bears”. read more

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS: OCT. 16, 2015

HOUSTON — The Obama administration shut the door Friday on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic Ocean over the next two years, canceling auctions for drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

The decision by the Interior Department was not surprising because it came less than a month after Shell Oil canceled the most advanced exploration project in the region because of disappointing results from a test well and high costs at a time when oil prices are extremely low.

Still, the announcement is symbolically important as the administration steps back from its cautious support of drilling in the Arctic. read more

BY ANTONIA JUHASZ / OCTOBER 13, 2015

Earlier this month, Shell’s tumultuous Arctic drilling campaign came to an abrupt and costly end. In a written statement, the company announced the cessation of its offshore Alaska activities “for the foreseeable future”—at a loss of billions of dollars. This both stunned and thrilled critics, many of whom worried that the seven-year effort to stop Shell was dead in July, when the Obama administration approved the company’s permits to drill. read more

By Matt McGrath: Environment correspondent, BBC News, Alaska: 12 Oct 2015

Expanding the search for oil is necessary to pay for the damage caused by climate change, the Governor of Alaska has told the BBC.

The state is suffering significant climate impacts from rising seas forcing the relocation of remote villages.

Governor Bill Walker says that coping with these changes is hugely expensive.

He wants to “urgently” drill in the protected lands of the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge to fund them.

Alaska has been severely hit by the dramatic drop in the price of oil over the past two years. read more

Environmental groups have become emboldened by their perceived triumph over Shell in the Arctic, in which they refined new tactics. What impact might this decision have on the future green movement in the United States?

Environmental organizations celebrated when Royal Dutch Shell announced it was halting oil and gas explorations in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea “for the foreseeable future.” Activists heralded the move as an unprecedented victory for their campaign to stop drilling: They managed to shut down a fossil fuels project, they claimed.

However, the oil giant is adamant that environmental groups played no role in its decision to leave the Arctic. A spokesperson confirmed to DW that the company withdrew for economic and legislative reasons, stating that the Burger J well didn’t contain enough oil to develop a viable commercial project. read more

Yereth Rosen: Alaska Dispatch News: October 3, 2015

When Royal Dutch Shell announced that it had lost its big-money bet in the Chukchi Sea and would end its entire program in the offshore U.S. Arctic, the hyperbole and finger-pointing began in earnest.

Rep. Don Young accused President Obama and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell of deliberately sabotaging Alaska’s economy. “I’m sure somewhere Sally Jewell and President Obama are smiling and celebrating Shell’s decision to cease operations off the coast of Alaska,” Young said in a statement issued just after Shell’s announcement. read more

Terry Macalister: Monday 28 September 2015 18.29 BST

Barry Gardiner, Labour’s new shadow minister for energy and climate change, said Shell had been engaged in a fool’s errand. “(Potentially) desecrating one of the world’s last wildernesses shows a complete failure of moral leadership at the head of the company. If his investors are not calling for Ben van Beurden’s head, now that the company has suffered a $4.1bn loss then his board certainly should be.”

FULL ARTICLE

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell has abandoned its long quest to become the first company to produce oil in Alaska’s Arctic waters, darkening the nation’s long-term oil prospects and delighting environmental groups that tried to block the project.

After years of effort, Shell is leaving the region “for the foreseeable future” because it failed to find enough oil to make further drilling worthwhile.

The company has spent more than $7 billion on the effort, slogged through a regulatory gauntlet and fought environmental groups that feared a spill in the harsh climate would be difficult to clean up and devastating to polar bears, walruses, seals and other wildlife. read more

Kamal Ahmed: Business editor: 28 Sept 2015

It could have been Hillary Clinton’s tweet that did it.

Just after the US government had given the go-ahead for Shell to restart its exploration in Alaska, the Democratic presidential candidate took to the social media site.

“The Arctic is a unique treasure,” Mrs Clinton said on Twitter. “Given what we know now, it’s not worth the risk of drilling.”

Which seemed to ignore the fact that drilling has been taking place in the Arctic for decades – for example oil was first discovered in one of the main basins, Prudhoe Bay, in 1968. read more

By DAN JOLING: 18 Sept 2015

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Critics of Arctic offshore petroleum drilling have used climbing gear, kayaks and polar bear costumes to protest industrial activity in the Arctic. They’re now trying humor.

Actors Alexander Skarsgard of “True Blood” and Jack McBrayer of “30 Rock,” along with Andy Bichlbaum of “The Yes Men” activists, are on a Greenpeace ship in the Greenland Sea with a team from the Funny or Die production company to make a comedy series focused on industrial threats to the Arctic. read more

The Kulluk is an Arctic drill rig owned by Royal Dutch Shell. In 2012, the rig ran aground off Sitkalidak Island near Kodiak Island. The highly publicized incident was used by drilling opponents as an example of Shell’s lack of qualifications to drill in the Arctic. (Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Sara Francis/U.S. Coast Guard)

By Liz Ruskin, APRN-Washington: September 16, 2015

Hundreds of environmental groups are uniting under a new banner to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. It’s called: “Keep It in the Ground.”

They’re asking President Obama to stop new petroleum leases on public lands. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell rejected the idea in a meeting with reporters today. read more

By Steven Mufson September 11

Shell Oil Co.’s president Marvin Odum made the trip on Sept. 2 from Houston to this northern-most town in the United States, a spot whose traditional name, Ukpeagvik, means “place where snowy owls are hunted.”

Odum is here hunting, too, for oil offshore and political support from Alaska Natives living in Barrow, a ramshackle town of muddy streets, littered with all-terrain vehicles and guarded by snow fences on one side and on the other a four-foot-high earthen berm to protect against high winds and seas. read more

Arctic developments have great potential, but are they worth the risks?

By Debbie Carlson: Sept. 7, 2015

As climate change melts some of the Arctic’s permafrost, natural resource companies and shippers are eyeing the potential to develop a region that is receiving renewed public attention from President Barack Obama’s trip to Alaska.

According to global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney’s Global Business Policy Council, worldwide investment in the region could reach $100 billion over the next decade. The Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route could potentially decrease travel times between the U.S., Europe and Asia by 40 percent, while the value of hydrocarbon deposits – crude oil and natural gas – located in the U.S. Arctic alone could exceed $1 trillion. The region is also home to rich metal deposits. read more

Rose Troup Buchanan: Wednesday 02 September 2015

Greenpeace campaigners, including actress Emma Thompson, installed an inflatable polar bear the size of a double-decker bus outside Shell’s London headquarters to demonstrate against the company’s drilling in the Arctic on Wednesday.

The sixty-odd activists, six of who are attached to the three-tonne bear named Aurora, moved into place at around 4am this morning. The bear will “roar” throughout the morning.

Greenpeace is demanding Shell halt drilling in Arctic, which the environmental group says is placing the area at extreme risk of an oil spill. Researchers claim the company’s drilling is incompatible with limiting global warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels. read more

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD SEPT. 1, 2015

A version of this editorial appears in print on September 2, 2015, on page A24 of the New York edition

A presidential trip has enormous power to focus attention on a place and an issue, and President Obama’s trip to Alaska has been minutely choreographed with visits to glaciers, threatened Inuit villages and the like to provide a stunning and alarming context to his message on the urgent need to address climate change.

Four times in a 24-minute speech in Anchorage he declared that “we’re not acting fast enough,” a message especially true in the countdown to December’s United Nations climate conference in Paris. This will be the most ambitious effort by the world’s nations to produce an equitable deal on reducing greenhouse gases, and the United States, as the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon gases (after China), must be at the forefront of the effort. read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sep 2, 2015, 12:31 AM ET

By DAN JOLING Associated Press

The president of Shell Oil Co. said Tuesday exploratory drilling off Alaska’s northwest coast is going well despite stormy weather last week that caused the company to halt operations for a few days.

And in an interview with The Associated Press Marvin Odum said he expects further protests against the company’s plans for Arctic drilling like the ones in Seattle and Portland where activists in kayaks tried to block Shell vessels. read more

State leader sees the oil era ending, but development still vital to Alaska’s economy.

By Daniel J. Graeber     |   Sept. 1, 2015 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept. 1 (UPI) — Alaska needs to exploit its vast natural resources, but do so in a way that heeds the growing threats of climate changes, the state’s lieutenant governor said.

President Barack Obama is in Alaska touting the dual agenda of taking the steps needed to slow the impacts of climate change while ensuring state revenue from the oil and gas industry remains durable. Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time signing off on arctic drilling permits for Royal Dutch Shell has earned both praise and condemnation. read more

US president’s call for action on climate change is at odds with letting Shell drill for oil in the Arctic, says Bill McKibben read more

by HALIMAH ABDULLAH and M. ALEX JOHNSON: NEWS SEP 1 2015

In a forceful address, Obama opened the “GLACIER” conference in Anchorage, Alaska, by declaring: “We are not moving fast enough. None of the nations represented here are moving fast enough.”

Just weeks ago, Obama gave final approval to Shell Oil’s drilling in the Alaskan Arctic for the first time in 20 years — a move that raised the hackles of environmentalists, who accused his administration of hypocrisy. read more

Environmental groups are outraged over his drilling policies.

Kate Sheppard: Senior reporter/Environment and energy editor, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — As President Barack Obama visits Alaska this week, he is facing criticism and outright outrage from environmental advocates who say his focus on climate change while in the region contradicts his administration’s decision to allow Shell to drill there.

The administration granted Shell permission to begin exploratory oil and gas drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer. And Obama plans to put a major emphasis on climate change during his visit to Alaska, the frontline of climate change’s effects in the United States. Environmental groups say the mixed messaging from Obama constitutes “climate hypocrisy.” The liberal group Credo Action put up a website mocking Obama’s visit as his “Mission Accomplished” moment, likening it to George W. Bush’s 2003 speech declaring that the U.S. had “prevailed” in Iraq. read more

As the giant Shell oil company begins highly controversial and risky exploration drilling in the Arctic, the price of crude continues to slide. Kieran Cooke from Climate News Network reports: 31 August 2015

It’s a gamble — some would say a giant gamble. Before even one litre of oil has been found, the Anglo-Dutch Shell group is believed to have spent more than US$7 billion just making preparations for its latest Arctic venture.

Shell is betting on finding the oil industry’s Holy Grail: according to 2008 estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic contains more than 20 per cent of the world’s remaining hydrocarbon resources — including at least 90 billion barrels of oil. read more