Biden suspends oil leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The suspension includes 10-year leases that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued on Jan. 6, 2021, which span more than 430,000 acres of the refuge.
Oil, natural gas & divestment
Court ends Trump’s attempt to allow drilling in 128 million acres of Atlantic and Arctic Oceans
In April of 2017, Trump signed an executive order aiming to undo an Obama-era ban on fossil fuel exploration in that territory, but a federal judge in Alaska ruled the move unlawful in 2019.
U.S. Federal Judge blocks further oil and gas extraction in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest
The ruling rebuked the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to consider threats to public health, endangered species, and watersheds before opening more than 40,000 acres of the forest to fracking last year.
U.S. federal judge orders record penalty against Exxon for thousands of Clean Air Act violations
A U.S. District Court judge has imposed a $14.25 million penalty to punish the company for violating the federal laws—the largest yet imposed in a Clean Air Act citizen enforcement suit.
Dutch court orders Shell Oil to pay for harm done to Nigerian farmers
Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary must pay punitive restitution to Nigerian villages for oil spill contamination that brought death, illness, and destruction to Nigerian farmers and communities.
Three major banks will no longer finance oil trade in the Amazon Sacred Headwaters region in Ecuador
The decision from Credit Suisse, ING, and BNP Paribas is seen as a major victory for environmental and Indigenous rights activists, Reuters reported.
President Biden orders end to fossil fuel subsidies
The executive order “directs federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law and identify new opportunities to spur innovation, commercialization, and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure.”
Joe Biden halts Keystone XL pipeline construction
The 1,700-mile pipeline was planned to carry roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
French central bank to drop coal and limit oil and gas in portfolio
The Bank of France, which manages 22 billion euros, will no longer invest in companies that generate more than 2 percent of their revenues from coal by the end of 2021 and will drop this threshold to zero percent by 2024.
Cambridge, Massachusetts to be first US city to post warning stickers on gas pumps
“The gas pump stickers will remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options.”