E2-Wire

U.S. drivers and President Obama are both benefitting from falling gas prices this Memorial Day weekend.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday that the House will vote in July on a bill to ease environmental regulations in response to raids on Gibson Guitar factories last year.

Federal agents seized seized raw materials, electronic files and guitars as part of an investigation into whether the guitar-maker had imported illegal wood in violation of the Lacey Act. 

The Senate approved a plan late Thursday that would make it easier for lawmakers and staff to drive plug-in electric vehicles to work.

The bill, which passed unanimously, authorizes the Architect of the Capitol to install battery recharging stations in parking areas under Senate control in the Capitol complex.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an ally of Detroit automakers, hailed the bill Thursday as a way to help promote vehicles that “offer great potential in meeting our goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Billionaire Harold Hamm, who advises Romney on energy, said Obama's policies have failed.

Reuters explores the plans of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who will chair the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee if Republicans take the Senate in this fall’s elections.

Bloomberg looks at a report showing that Japan’s devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant might have released far more radiation than previously estimated.

The Associated Press reports that Ohio’s regulations for hydraulic fracturing are about to clear their final legislative hurdles amid green-group concerns that they’re too weak.

National Public Radio examines Exxon Mobil’s partnership with Russian oil giant Rosneft to look for oil in the Arctic.

State of Play: House Republicans will cap a two-day spree of energy-themed events across the country Friday with a trip by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and several other members to an offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The visit, which will emphasize GOP calls for a major expansion of offshore oil-and-gas leasing, follows a series of events in several states Thursday.

Click here and here for more E2 coverage of the GOP’s recess push on oil-and-gas policy, which is happening as President Obama is ramping up calls for Congress to extend green-energy tax credits.

Extending the wind-energy production tax credit is something Obama says Congress can do quickly to help the economy.

Obama nominated environmental science professor Allison Macfarlane to replace Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who announced this week he would resign.

Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels hit record levels in 2011, according to the International Energy Agency, which warned Thursday that the window to prevent temperature increases above 2 degrees Celsius is closing fast.

The Paris-based IEA released a preliminary estimate Thursday showing that global emissions from burning fossil fuels reached 31.6 gigatons (Gt) last year, a 3.2 percent increase over 2010.

The data show that emissions from China and India jumped, while they fell slightly in the United States and the European Union.

The IEA warns that global emissions need to peak soon to stand a decent chance of limiting the eventual average global temperature rise to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold that many scientists and advocates say is needed to avert the most dangerous climatic changes.

The New York Times has published a long, in-depth look into how Royal Dutch Shell won White House buy-in for its controversial plans to drill in fragile Arctic waters off Alaska's northern coast.

The oil giant, over environmentalists' objections, has won vital regulatory approvals and is on the cusp of obtaining federal drilling permits to begin exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas this summer.

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