Fossil Fuels

A fossil fuel company’s $300m lawsuit against Greenpeace opens in rural North Dakota on Monday, in a case that has been widely condemned by constitutional rights experts as baseless, bad faith litigation that threatens free speech.

Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, accuses Greenpeace of defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline (Dapl).

President-elect Donald Trump has picked North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) to serve as both interior secretary and “energy czar,” a newly created role that will orchestrate the administration’s sweeping plans to repeal climate rules, scrap clean-energy subsidies and boost oil and gas production on millions of acres of federal lands nationwide.

President-elect Trump has chosen North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) to lead the Interior Department, which manages the nation’s public lands and waters.

Trump also said Friday that Burgum would lead a newly formed “national energy council” that’s in charge of energy ” permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation [and] transportation”

President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will nominate Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of the Interior. 

“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic,” Trump said of the North Dakota governor during remarks at the America First Policy Institute gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate. 

Trump, 78, indicated that he will make a “formal announcement” regarding Burgum on Friday.

The Biden-Harris administration had been a champion of an extensive climate agenda. Not only did Democratic candidate Kamala Harris lose the presidential election to former President Donald Trump, a man who has called “climate hysteria” a “hoax,” voters in two Harris stronghold states rejected anti-fossil fuel measures. 

This article was published in 2022. 

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Lufthansa will add a surcharge up to £61 per flight to cover the costs of using greener fuels from next year, the German airline has said.

The charges will affect flights from the European Union, the UK, Switzerland and Norway, and start from about 85p, depending on the route, the carrier said.

Under EU rules, airlines must use a blend of at least 2 per cent of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from 2025, rising steadily to 70 per cent by 2050.

The world's fossil fuel industries should be banned from advertising to help save the world from climate change, the head of the United Nations said on Wednesday.

UN Secretary General António Guterres called coal, oil and gas corporations the “godfathers of climate chaos” who had distorted the truth and deceived the public for decades.

Just as tobacco advertising was banned because of the threat to health, the same should now apply to fossil fuels, he said.

For the past few years, the West has been trying to break China’s grip on minerals that are critical for defense and green technologies. Despite their efforts, Chinese companies are becoming more dominant, not less.