A natural gas pipeline exploded June 8 near the town of Darrouzett in the Texas Panhandle's Lipscomb County, killing two construction workers and injuring three others. The men were working for a contracting company hauling caliche when a bulldozer struck the pipeline. Fire trucks responded from a number of nearby counties, including from across the state line in Oklahoma. A video of the site showed a blackened patch of grassland hundreds of feet in diameter, with the smoldering carcasses of three 18-wheel trucks, a van, a flatbed truck and two tractors.

World oil consumption dropped by 1.2 million barrels a day last year, the biggest decline since 1982, according to a study released June 9 by BP. "Energy developments in 2009 were dominated by a global recession and, later in the year, a tentative recovery," said Tony Hayward, BP's embattled chief executive who's become a media fixture in the wake of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "We can't know how durable this recovery will be," he added. "But the data show changes in the pattern of global energy consumption that are likely to indicate long-term change."

On May 29, two days after Enbridge Inc. filed its application for the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, over 500 northern British Columbia residents gathered in Kitamaat Village to oppose the controversial plan, which would bring oil supertankers to the BC coast. "Every day more and more people, from all walks of life, are coming together to stop this dangerous project. They are sending a very clear message: Enbridge oil spills will not be allowed to destroy our territory," said Gerald Amos, a Haisla councillor and an organizer of the event.

An anonymous reader writes on Slashdot, May 13:

Here's a listing of several scientific and economic guides for estimating the volume of flow of the leak in the Gulf of Mexico erupting at a rate of somewhere around 1 million barrels per day. A new video released shows the largest hole spewing oil and natural gas from an aperture 5 feet in diameter at a rate of approximately 4 barrels per second. The oil coming up through 5,000 feet of pressurized salt water acts like a fractionating column. What you see on the surface is just around 20% of what is actually underneath the approximate 9,000 square miles of slick on the surface. The natural gas doesn't bubble to the top but gets suspended in the water, depleting the oxygen from the water. BP would not have been celebrating with execs on the rig just prior to the explosion if it had not been capable producing at least 500,000 barrels per day—under control. If the rock gave way due to the out-of-control gushing (or due to a nuke being detonated to contain the leak), it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi [pounds per square inch] of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event.

For the much of April, World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg was in Bolivia, covering the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth in Cochabamba and related peasant and ecological struggles. Our May Exit Poll was: "Did you see or hear any media coverage of the Bolivia climate summit? Do you think the event was worthy of coverage?" We received one response:

Ninety oil workers have been evacuated from a North Sea rig as engineers fight to control a huge build-up of pressure in a well that may have the potential to blow up the platform. Norwegian company Statoil partly evacuated the Gullfaks oil rig off on May 20 following unexpected fluctuations in pressure. The company said all 89 non-essential workers were taken off the rig as a precaution, while the other remained to try to normalize pressure. Pressure levels remain unstable a week later. Workers are pumping cement into the well in an operation similar to that being attempted by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even as the disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, lawyers for BP and federal regulators are working to settle a civil suit the government brought in connection with the 2006 pipeline spills in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oilfield. In papers BP and government lawyers jointly filed in US District Court in Anchorage recently, the two sides said they had "conducted extensive settlement discussions including...exchanging several drafts of various settlement constructs." Judge John Sedwick granted a motion to extend deadlines related to expert witness disclosure and discovery until near the end of the year.

The American Power Act, a bill proposing a carbon trading system for reducing US greenhouse gas emissions, was introduced May 12 in the Senate. Written by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the bill aims to reduce emissions by 17% in 2020 and by over 80% in 2050. President Barack Obama endorsed the bill, saying, "This legislation will put America on the path to a clean energy economy that will create American jobs building the solar panels, wind blades and the car batteries of the future. It will strengthen our national security by beginning to break our dependence on foreign oil. And it will protect our environment for our children and grandchildren."