Montana’s Oil Pipeline Safety Review Council, formed July 20, 2011, in the wake of ExxonMobil Pipeline Co.’s 1,000-bbl crude spill into the Yellowstone River, has issued its recommendations to the governor’s office.

A federal district judge in New Orleans dismissed 24 individual claims against Nalco Co. stemming from the 2010 Macondo deepwater well crude oil spill cleanup.

Repsol will participate in the installation of 300 recharging terminals for electric vehicles in Spain.

Few experimental spills have been done offshore the US and Canada in the last 20 years, noted a speaker at the Arctic Technology Conference in Houston on Dec. 4 during a panel discussion on oil spill preparedness.

An Arctic Oil Spill Response Technology Joint Industry Program (JIP) will continue building knowledge on Arctic offshore oil spill response expertise already developed through 40 years of research by individual companies and other organizations, speakers told the Arctic Technology Conference Dec. 4.

Opposition to the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline project has become more noisy than widespread, American Petroleum Institute officials said on Dec. 4 as Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality prepared to hold a public hearing on the project’s proposed new route later that day.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will consider listing the lesser prairie chicken, a bird whose habitat is in five US Midcontinent states with oil and gas production, as an endangered species.

Lenape Resources Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Avon, a town in Livingston County, NY, to overturn a municipal moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas exploration and production.

The US Department of the Interior plans to sell leases for wind farms offshore Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Virginia, marking the first lease sale for wind energy on the Outer Continental Shelf, officials said from Washington, DC, on Nov. 30.

The US Coast Guard approved another remotely operated vehicle inspection of the Deepwater Horizon wreckage and the Macondo well site, scheduled to start Dec. 3.

The US Environmental Protection Agency temporarily suspended BP Exploration & Production Inc., BP PLC, and BP affiliates from new contracts with the federal government, citing what EPA called BP’s lack of business integrity regarding the Macondo deepwater well blowout and resulting oil spill.