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view edit Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 7, 2006 - 08:10. A price spike 32 times larger than the proportion of oil production lost? It's what NBC's Ann Curry imagined on this morning's Today show. 'Soaring Gas Prices' is one of the Today show's longest-running hits. This morning's episode brought us Ann Curry trying to induce CNBC financial reporter Ron Insana to paint the gloomiest possible picture in the wake of the news that BP has shut down an Alaskan oilfield. BP shut the Prudhoe Bay field indefinitely due to the discovery of severe corrosion and a very small...

Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department to block expanded oil and gas exploration in an ecologically sensitive area of Alaska's North Slope. The 18-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Juneau focuses on the government's decision in January to allow drillers to lease previously closed acreage in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bush administration's decision opens up 389,000 acres for leasing, giving drillers a chance to find and produce an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the tundra north and east of Teshekpuk Lake....

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - An antitrust lawsuit filed Monday against Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC claims the two oil giants are restricting the nation's supply of natural gas and keeping prices at record highs. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fairbanks, says the two companies acted together to eliminate competition for the exploration, development and marketing of natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to U.S. markets. "The only reason for them to collusively not to sell is to try to continue the scarcity that has driven natural gas prices to historic highs," said David Boies, the...

Energy: A new report on oil development in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was met with the usual howls. But that doesn't change the fact that there are no good reasons not to open oil fields in that region.Last week, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration issued a study that said oil pumped from ANWR could cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil by nearly 900,000 barrels a day by 2025 — about two-thirds of what we import from Saudi Arabia each day. Environmental groups reflexively dismissed the report, saying that the boost is so negligible that it's not worth disturbing...

With the nation on an elevated terror alert, the oil tanker terminal in Valdez, Alaska has been temporarily closed at the request of the U-S Coast Guard. Alyeska Service Pipeline Company spokesman Mike Heatwole says tanker loading was suspended Tuesday night and remained closed yesterday. Tankers load Prudhoe Bay oil destined for Valdez, the end of the 800-mile pipeline, which carries 17 percent of the nation's domestic oil supply. Last week, security was beefed up in the Prince William Sound community after federal officials said al-Qaida operatives could target remote sites such as oil facilities in Alaska. Officials also said...

In the 1970s, environmentalists claimed that drilling at Prudhoe Bay would kill the caribou. The oil companies went ahead and drilled anyway. Here's what has happened to the caribou since then. http://www.anwr.org/features/caribouhigh.htm