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Bob Reiss talks about Shell oil’s plans to sink exploratory wells in the waters off the North Slope of Alaska—a site that the company believes contains three times as much oil as the Gulf of Mexico. To write The Eskimo and the Oil Man: The Battle at the Top of the World for America's Future he traveled in America's High North over three years and spent time with scientists, diplomats, military planners, Eskimo whale hunters, and officials at the highest levels of the government to explore the issues dividing every American community wrestling with the balance between energy use and environmental protection, our love of cheap gas and the romance of pristine wilderness.

A June auction of over 38 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling may look nice on the President's energy résumé, but leaves oil companies and Republicans wanting more.

Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and contributor to the New Yorker, and now author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, discusses the history of the oil company that sees itself as an "independent sovereign."

Abrahm Lustgarten, reporter at ProPublica and author of Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, reflects on the errors leading up to the spill, and its ramifications a year after the catastrophe.

Energy independence has the potentitial to completely reshape American foreign policy and the U.S. economy, yet environmental concerns persist. We're joined by Clifford Krauss, oil and gas business reporter for our partner The New York Times, to discuss the possibility of energy independence.

Yesterday, President Obama kicked off a two-day tour to highlight his administration’s energy strategy, which includes a stop in a small city called Cushing. If you aren’t from Oklahoma, you might not know about Cushing, or why it factors into the president’s energy plans. Ben Allen, a reporter from affiliate station KOSU in Oklahoma City, is here to explain. Carol O’Dell owned a ranch just outside Cushing, and she’s still a regular visitor to the town.

T. Boone Pickens is an unlikely environmentalist. The native Oklahoman made his fortune in the oil business, and then, in 2008, shifted his focus to America's energy future. The result is the Pickens Plan, an energy policy to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil through alternative energy and natural gas. Pickens will detail his plan at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California, this week, where John Hockenberry is also speaking. 

Using the 14th amendment as their basis, many courts have treated corporations as people. Usually these rulings are beneficial to corporations and their larger interests, such as in the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to endorse candidates like individuals. However, a new case will determine whether or not a corporation can be convicted as an accomplice to a crime against humanity. In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Royal Dutch Petroleum and its subsidiary, Shell, are accused of aiding an autocratic regime that brutalized minorities in an oil-rich region of Nigeria.

Gas prices are going up and it's turning into a campaign issue. Gas prices have already risen 25 cents since the start of the year, putting them at $3.25 a gallon, a record high for this time of year. Occupy organizers turn their attention towards the more than 2 million people in prisons with what they're calling National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners. Arizona Republican Senator John McCain is in Egypt trying to resolve a diplomatic dispute over American NGO workers in Egypt charged with using illegal funding to incite revolution. 

This time last year, unrest in Libya sent oil prices climbing, adding pressure to an already struggling economy.  Now, it looks like a similar scenario could happen this spring and summer: in retaliation for an embargo planned by the European Union, Iran has threatened to cut off oil supplies. Impacting virtually every aspect of the U.S. economy, these increased oil prices will almost certainly influence the election's climate.

In his State of the Union, the president showed his support for more domestic energy exploration, and while we may have stopped one pipeline, we haven't changed a system that demands us to pipe more oil and natural gas further distances to power our everyday lives.

In the wake of revelations about its nuclear program, many Western powers have discussed sanctioning Iran's petroleum exports. On Tuesday, Iran stepped up its saber-rattling, warning that if an American aircraft carrier returned to its base via the Strait of Hormuz, it would face the "full force" of the Iranian navy. Roughly one fifth of the world's oil travels through the strait, and it is also where Iran recently tested two long-range missiles during a naval exercise. However, a spokesman for the Department of Defense stated, "the deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades."

Despite high gas prices, the U.S. is set to become a net fuel exporter for the first time in 62 years. While the U.S. is still importing 8 to 9 million barrels of crude oil a day, it is exporting a greater amount of refined fuel and petroleum products. The spike in exports is primarily driven by an increased demand for fuel worldwide combined with declining consumption here at home. But is the nation's newfound role as fuel exporter a blip on the map or a sustainable trend?

Greg Palast discusses his investigation into how the oil and banking industries manage to avoid government regulation. In Vulture’s Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores, he shows how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and veiled connections between the financial industry and big energy.

Andrew Scott Cooper, is a historian who has worked for the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, and is author of The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East

The world’s largest energy project is underway in Alberta, Canada. Petroleum is being excavated from vast deposits of tar sands and a proposed pipeline would carry it to refineries in the United States. Journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, examines the ecological and economic impacts of the plan to develop the oil sands.

Jim Robbins, veteran environmental reporter and writer for the New York Times, discusses the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL Pipeline, as well as the environmental and political concerns with oil sands.

Alaskan waters remain off-limits to drilling, much to many oil companies' dismay. But Exxon has decided to hop over the Bering Strait, and make a deal with Russia to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean in their territory. This deal may show how lucrative climate change has become to the oil business, since more oil is becoming available as Arctic ice recedes.

Steven LeVine, author of The Oil and the Glory blog and contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, discusses Libyan oil. What does the future of Libya mean for the global oil markets? How will the oil-rich country recover economically?

Before the uprisings began in Libya in February, the nation produced 1.6 million barrels of oil per day, and was responsible for two percent of the world's oil supplies. Six months ago, shipments stopped at the rebellion grew there. The loss of Libyan oil drove up the price of Brent crude, which is sold to refineries on the United States' east coast.