Energy, Oil Drilling | featured news

The company said it would pause its exploration drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas after encountering numerous problems.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday that Royal Dutch Shell would be allowed to start “certain limited preparatory activities” for oil drilling in the environmentally sensitive waters off Alaska’s northwest coast.

The austere North Dakota prairie is the unlikely center of one of the biggest oil booms in decades. But will drilling here and in other domestic oil patches help the country move closer to the elusive goal of energy independence?

It may be dangerous, difficult work, but oil drillers are well compensated for the job: In 2011 the average salary for rig workers and other industry personnel was $99,175.

It's the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show....

The United States could create more than one million jobs by 2030 by expanding offshore drilling, limiting federal regulation of shale gas development and quickly approving a Canadian oil sands pipeline, according to a study commissioned by a major oil industry trade group.

A new oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, although energy company BP said Thursday the discovery had nothing to do with its operations and was far from the site of its disaster-hit Macondo well.

An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday in an epic environmental case that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs....

President Barack Obama will not be allowing new drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years, according to a senior administration official.

Energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico will have to permanently plug nearly 3,500 nonproducing wells and dismantle about 650 unused platforms, the Obama administration says.