Facebook has rejected an advertisement from a group criticizing the actions of Fwd.us, the political group started by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and several other prominent members of the technology community. CREDO Mobile, a mobile carrier that lobbies on progressive issues, has been an outspoken critic of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It has launched a campaign to protest ads funded by Zuckerberg’s lobbying group, Fwd.us, that support pipeline proponent Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.).

Draft federal rules on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, will be released in a matter of "weeks, not months," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Tuesday. The draft rules have undergone "sufficient change," Jewell said during a media call. They’ll go through a public comment period once revealed. Interior decided in January to rewrite the rules that would govern fracking on federal lands. The controversial drilling method involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into tight-rock formations to tap oil and gas reserves buried deep underground.

The impact of natural gas exports on everything from foreign relations to jobs will get a look in the House during a May 7 hearing, The Hill has learned. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power will hold the 10 a.m. hearing, committee spokeswoman Charlotte Baker told The Hill. Witnesses for the hearing have not yet been finalized, she said. The hearing will sharpen the focus on the geopolitical effects of expanding natural gas exports. The Energy Department (DOE) is weighing a number of applications to export natural gas to nations that lack a free-trade agreement with the United States. Such deals receive more scrutiny than others, as federal law says they must be in the national interest.

An effort by ethanol backers to get the Environmental Protection Agency to scale back the amount of advanced biofuels required in the U.S. gasoline supply this year has opened a rift in a decades-old friendship within the biofuels industry. The Renewable Fuels Association made the request to EPA in an attempt to limit imports of Brazilian-based sugar cane ethanol. But Michael McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association, sees RFA’s move as both encroaching on his turf and violating a pledge to protect the EPA-administered renewable fuels mandate at all costs.

Former Vice President Gore slammed the White House press corps Tuesday for failing to press President Obama on climate change during a news conference. "Journalists asked the President about important 2nd term agenda items this AM, but continued to ignore the climate crisis. Why?," Gore tweeted from his @algore account. Journalists asked the President about important 2nd term agenda items this AM, but continued to ignore the climate crisis. Why?

U.S. green car startup Coda Holdings Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after selling just 100 of its all-electric sedans, another example of battery-powered vehicles' failure to break into the mass market. The filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware will allow the Los Angeles company to exit the auto sector and refocus on energy storage, a far less capital-intensive business. The company uses the same technology it used in cars to build systems for utilities and building operators to store power.

A series of pipeline-construction spills by one company has the Ohio EPA demanding answers and environmental-advocacy groups warning that this is one more activity tied to fracking that is endangering streams and wetlands. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials call the spills “ inadvertent returns.” They involve a lubricant made of clay and water that sometimes gushes unexpectedly from the ground when builders drill tunnels to install natural-gas pipelines. Ohio EPA records show that Denver-based MarkWest Energy had four spills between Sept. 17 and Feb. 9, polluting streams and wetlands in Harrison and Belmont counties. The Harrison County spills included one late last summer affecting Brushy Fork near Cadiz, and a Nov. 4 spill near Cadiz that fouled 1 1/2 miles of Boggs Fork and a nearby wetland and took more than three months to clean up.

An ad campaign featuring images of Exxon Mobil's Arkansas oil spill disaster is targeting the federal regulators in charge of approving the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project. The consumer watchdog group SumOfUs.org has joined with Oil Change International and Environmental Action to place ads in the Washington, D.C. metro system with images of the tar sands pipeline spill that occurred last month in Mayflower, Ark. That disaster involved the rupture of Exxon's Pegasus pipeline and spilled somewhere between 150,000 and 210,000 gallons of tar sands oil in a residential neighborhood near Lake Conway, a popular fishing spot near Little Rock.

The playground in Manchester, a neighborhood on Houston's east side, is empty much of the time. Children who play for too long here often start to cough. They go back inside, leaving an empty swing set in the shadow of a nearby oil refinery. Yudith Nieto, 24, has lived in Manchester since her family came from Mexico when she was a small child. While it's OK to visit the playground, she says, it's not OK to bring her camera. On several occasions, security guards from the Valero refinery next door have appeared and ask her to leave, claiming that taking pictures in the park was "illegal." They've even brought in Houston police as reinforcements. Valero, one of the major oil companies operating in this industrial part of Houston, keeps its security busy: Nieto says that they have harassed documentary filmmakers and journalists. And when college students participating in an "alternative spring break" program came to the park to talk to her about the neighborhood’s problems, a guard drove up in an unmarked vehicle and took video of the meeting on his cellphone. "I'm not afraid of the attention I'm getting from these people," Nieto says, "because we want people to know that we're aware."

In 1990, "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher, the conservative hero, scientist and former leader of Britain, called for swift action to combat climate change. She said scientists knew enough for governments to proceed with an "insurance policy" against catastrophe. Thatcher borrowed the insurance concept from former President Ronald Reagan, who led negotiation of the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer. Eight days after Thatcher died on April 8, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said, "There is no science in global warming." What science there is, he said, "is not settled. Beside that, we all know that it's a hoax now."

The Obama administration is pushing to protect public lands that could be used for producing renewable energy. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Tuesday will publish a regulation in the Federal Register to limit mining claimsnear areas that have been identified as potential sites for wind or solar energy production or that are included in pending permits. The move will prohibit claims for mining operations on a renewable energy proposal's right-of-way lands while the BLM considers the application. The bureau has had an interim rule on the books since 2011, but the adoption of the final rule will give the government a long-term mechanism to safeguard those lands.

Maybe you've heard that North America is producing a lot more oil these days, courtesy of fracking, tar sands and other new sources. The Atlantic has a nicely reported cover story on the whole phenomenon by Charles C. Mann. Headline: "We will never run out of oil." It's a great article, but here's an key bit of additional context. Stuart Staniford has some great charts looking at the rapid growth in Chinese oil consumption over the past few decades. He's also done a simple extrapolation to see what China's oil demand would look like if it kept growing at 7 percent annually for another decade — hardly a wild assumption: