Environment

July 29, 2016 - This week 69 state lawmakers from the Carolinas and Georgia, both Democrats and Republicans, sent a letter asking the Obama administration to block seismic testing permits for oil and gas deposits off the East Coast. They joined hundreds of other local communities, elected officials, business groups and scientists opposed to offshore exploration and drilling.

July 7, 2016 - The utility initially requested a $50 million bond from two climate watchdog groups challenging the planned construction of a $1 billion gas plant near Asheville. Now Duke is asking for almost triple that amount in a move with serious implications for democracy.

July 1, 2016 - An environmental group wants the N.C. Ethics Commission to investigate whether the McCrory administration withheld information about a dinner meeting with Duke Energy officials and used state resources to benefit his re-election campaign. It's not the first ethics complaint filed against McCrory — or the first involving his relationship with the utility.

June 10, 2016 - A North Carolina-based climate advocacy group filed a complaint this week with the Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General charging that the EPA is covering up underreporting of the natural gas industry's emissions of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas.

June 9, 2016 - Two climate watchdogs will now have a chance to continue their appeal of North Carolina regulators' decision allowing Duke Energy to build a $1.1 billion fracked gas power plant thanks to an order handed down this week by the state appeals court rejecting a $10 million bond requirement from the nonprofit groups.

May 26, 2016 - In recent weeks, the company got the N.C. Utilities Commission to require an unprecedented $10 million bond from grassroots groups seeking to block construction of a fracked gas plant and lobbied N.C. lawmakers to get a coal ash bill that watchdogs have blasted as a "bailout" and a "sweetheart deal."

May 20, 2016 - A leak from a damaged pipeline at a Royal Dutch Shell deepwater production field off the Louisiana coast last week came amid mounting protests urging the Obama administration to halt new drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic.

May 5, 2016 - After local residents began raising concerns about cancer clusters near Duke Energy coal ash waste pits, the state cancer registry conducted a study that it claims shows there's no cause for worry — but a epidemiologist who reviewed the state's analysis says it does nothing of the sort.

April 29, 2016 - More than two decades ago, Louisiana created a tax exemption for horizontally drilled oil and gas wells that's still in place — and it's costing the cash-strapped state billions in revenues.

April 27, 2016 - While offshore drilling in the Atlantic is canceled for now, plans are still underway to conduct seismic blasting for oil and gas reserves. As scientists, environmentalists, local communities and some elected leaders press to block the tests, the industry has been contributing unprecedented amounts of money to influence key federal lawmakers.