Energy, Congress | featured news

Barack Obama will use a visit to a Chicago-area lab on Friday to call on Congress to set aside $2bn over the next decade to fund research into a next generation of electric cars. The White House said the Energy Security Trust, which Obama first proposed in his state of the union address, would use royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters and would not add to the deficit.

Americans are not happy with the government. But for the first time in a long while, it is not the most hated industry in the country. That honor now belongs to the oil and gas industry.

Congress is pressing ahead with a new package of crippling sanctions on Iran, expanding on financial penalties and targeting Tehran's energy and shipping sectors in the hope that economic pressure undercuts its suspected nuclear weapons program....

President Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to help strengthen federal supervision of international oil markets, amid pressure from U.S. voters to take action on rising gasoline prices. The president wants Congress to increase penalties for market manipulation and empower regulators to increase the amount of money energy traders are required to put behind their transactions.

An attempt to roll back oil company tax breaks was blocked in the Senate, despite a Rose Garden push by President Obama, who said the big five oil companies are doing “just fine” as consumers struggle with painfully high gas prices at the pump.

Senate negotiators, including Amy Klobuchar, D.- Minn., on Thursday announced a final deal that ends a 45-cent per gallon tax credit for ethanol.

Congress should take steps to limit speculation in oil markets, which has boosted prices as much as 30 percent, a new report from the Democratic staff of a House of Representatives oversight committee said on Monday.

A GOP bid to expand and hasten offshore oil drilling in the face of $4-a-gallon gasoline prices suffered an overwhelming defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, four days after President Barack Obama directed his administration to ramp up U.S. oil production....

The Senate blocked a bill Tuesday that would repeal about $2 billion a year in tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies, a Democratic response to $4-a-gallon gasoline that might fare better when Congress and the White House negotiate a deal later this year to increase the government's ability to borrow.

Congressional budget experts say a climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade, a key selling point for advocates who are struggling to move the bill through ...