Parker Drilling Co., a Houston- based oil services company, agreed to pay $15.9 million to settle U.S. allegations it tried to bribe a Nigerian government panel to reduce fines for violating the country’s customs laws.  More »

The EU Parliament unexpectedly shot down a proposal to reduce the supply of greenhosue gas credits entering the EU market, going against the recommendation of the Environment Committee, the EU Climate Action Commissioner, and the European Commission itself. While some of the negative votes were expected (Poland has fought vociferously against any action that would [...]  More »

Houston City Council on Wednesday will decide whether to sue BP for more than $23 million in connection with the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and resulting oil spill.  More »

John Guide, a BP team leader who supervised managers on the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, says he was frustrated by last-minute changes to the drilling project but didn’t have any safety concerns before the deadly blast.  More »

It has been a while since my last blog post. In the climate change legal world, most of what has happened in the past few months has been of the utilitarian, and not the showy variety. California continues to implement its Global Warming Solutions Act (A.B. 32) and has already held two auctions of the [...]  More »

Another player in the long-running, $19 billion pollution lawsuit against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador has switched sides — and accused former colleagues of hiding the truth.  More »

Chevron Corp. has agreed to drop a Colorado consulting firm and two of the firm’s employees from a fraud and racketeering lawsuit.  More »

A former BP engineer charged with deleting text messages about the company’s response to its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico claims federal prosecutors have tacked on “farcical” allegations that he also deleted dozens of voicemails to stymie a grand jury probe of the disaster.  More »

Angry British shareholders of oil giant BP urged the company Thursday to be more forceful in its legal fight against tens of billions of dollars in claims still being asserted by the U.S. government and several Gulf states affected by the 2010 oil spill. One suggested BP boycott Walt Disney World in Florida to get Americans “to come to their senses.”  More »

A New Hampshire jury has found ExxonMobil liable in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE. The oil giant could pay hundreds of millions of dollars to clean it up.  More »

A federal magistrate has ruled that federal authorities broke the law when they leased land in Monterey and Fresno counties to oil drillers without studying the possible risks of hydraulic fracturing.  More »

Jurors in New Hampshire’s groundwater contamination case against Exxon Mobil were asked to decide whether the state is seeking a scapegoat or the oil company was protecting its profits, not the environment, when it added MTBE to its gasoline.  More »