The new law directs the $17 billion Maine Public Employee Retirement System to divest $1.3 billion from fossil fuels within five years and directs the Treasury to do the same with other state funds.
The project that was supposed to cost under $5 billion had ballooned to nearly double that amount, thanks to determined opposition from environmental groups and Indigenous communities.
The suspension includes 10-year leases that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued on Jan. 6, 2021, which span more than 430,000 acres of the refuge.
In April of 2017, Trump signed an executive order aiming to undo an Obama-era ban on fossil fuel exploration in that territory, but a federal judge in Alaska ruled the move unlawful in 2019.
The ruling rebuked the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to consider threats to public health, endangered species, and watersheds before opening more than 40,000 acres of the forest to fracking last year.
A U.S. District Court judge has imposed a $14.25 million penalty to punish the company for violating the federal laws—the largest yet imposed in a Clean Air Act citizen enforcement suit.
Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary must pay punitive restitution to Nigerian villages for oil spill contamination that brought death, illness, and destruction to Nigerian farmers and communities.
The decision from Credit Suisse, ING, and BNP Paribas is seen as a major victory for environmental and Indigenous rights activists, Reuters reported.
The executive order “directs federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law and identify new opportunities to spur innovation, commercialization, and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure.”
The 1,700-mile pipeline was planned to carry roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
