Greenwire: With record-low U.S. natural gas prices worrying oil and gas companies that have invested heavily in breakthrough shale plays, the industry is sending drilling to tight oil prospects and resources rich in natural gas liquids -- better investments as crude prices linger near $100 per barrel. And with competition already fierce in North Dakota's Bakken field and south Texas' Eagle Ford, companies are turning toward lesser-known oil-rich formations in what could be the next chapter in the North American...

New York Times: Back, way back, before King Tut was born and Alexander the Great roamed his empire, the Senator sprouted in a swamp here in central Florida, one of thousands of its kind. So on Monday, when word got out that the huge, 3,500-year-old bald cypress had burned and collapsed, people from the area who thought that nothing — not hurricanes, not loggers, not disease — could fell the Senator, sank into disbelief. In a state known for its sprawl and its zeal for pouring concrete, the Senator stood as a testament...

Reuters: The Congress has the constitutional right to legislate permits for cross-border oil pipelines like TransCanada's Keystone XL, according to a new legal analysis released late on Friday. The study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service could give a boost to Republicans drafting legislation to overturn a decision this week by President Barack Obama to put the $7 billion Alberta-to-Texas project on ice. Historically, U.S. presidents have made executive decisions on pipelines that cross borders....

ScienceDaily: Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found. Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes' ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Philip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University. "For several years our...

Yahoo!: Exxon Mobil has reached an agreement with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to pay $1.6 million in penalties over the Yellowstone River oil spill, according to the Associated Press. The agreement specifically details that the oil company will spend $1.3 million on future environmental projects, pay $300,000 in cash, and reimburse state agencies for $760,000 in emergency response costs. The penalty is the largest in the history of the agency. With this landmark decision, here are some...

Climate Central: If you're on the Left Coast and like snow, it may be time to rejoice. If you're on the East Coast, though, don't hold your breath. The winter weather pattern is finally changing, steering long-awaited storms into California, Oregon, and Washington, while still failing to excite snow lovers along the East Coast. Aside from a light-to-moderate snow event on Saturday, the Washington-to-Boston corridor is likely to see milder than average conditions heading into early February, according to recently...

Scientific American: Add methane emissions to the growing list of environmental risks posed by fracking. Opposition to the hydraulic fracturing of deep shales to release natural gas rose sharply last year over worries that the large volumes of chemical-laden water used in the operations could contaminate drinking water. Then, in early January, earthquakes in Ohio were blamed on the disposal of that water in deep underground structures. Yesterday, two Cornell University professors said at a press conference that fracking...

Reuters: Republicans in Congress are considering using upcoming payroll tax cut or highway construction bills in order to force quick approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline but have not yet settled on a strategy, lawmakers said on Friday. Having failed so far to get President Barack Obama to approve TransCanada Corp's application for the $7 billion Canada-to-Texas pipeline, Republicans who control the House of Representatives are discussing Keystone during a three-day retreat in Baltimore that focuses...

Mongabay: The rural poor would substantially boost their income if the ecological services of the ecosystems they steward were valued and compensated by the rest of the world, claims a new study published in the journal Bioscience. The study assessed the value of benefits from receive from healthy and functioning ecosystems - including crop pollination, foods and fiber, medicines, clean water, and climate regulation - across 17 of the world's key conservation hotspots. It estimated the value of these services...

Daily Climate: Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. The swans, famed for their French horn call and immortalized by author E.B. White, were nearly hunted to extinction in much of the United States and Canada by the late 1800s for their meat, feathers, down and quills. Now, North America's largest wild fowl may be one of the few good-news...