Gas

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris has filed a civil lawsuit against BP West Coast Products, BP Products North America Inc. and Atlantic Richfield Co., accusing them of violating state laws on hazardous materials and hazardous waste. The lawsuit accuses the parties of failing to properly inspect and maintain underground tanks used to store gasoline at more than 780 gas stations in California. "Safe storage of gasoline is not only common sense, it is essential to protecting the integrity of California's groundwater resources," Harris said.

MEXICO CITY -- The blast that destroyed part of the headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil giant, killing at least 37 people and injuring dozens, was caused by an accumulation of gas ignited possibly by an electrical spark, the attorney general said Monday. Atty. Gen. Jesus Murillo Karam said the usual telltale signs of a bomb, such as a crater, splintered steel and explosives residue, did not turn up when civilian, military and foreign investigators surveyed the scene of the disaster.

Consumer Reports is blasting the new slate of turbocharged cars, saying they fail to live up to fuel economy claims. Ford Motor Co. comes in for particularly harsh grading. The newly released tests revealing that two turbo versions of its bread-and-butter Fusion midsize sedan fail to deliver either the power or the efficiency of non-turbo competitors such as the Honda Accord. The magazine found similar results for turbocharged versions of Ford's Escape small SUV and Ford F-150 pickup truck.

California gasoline prices have quietly crept close to their record for this time of year. But there are some positive signs for the state's motorists in the fuel supply numbers. After most recently bottoming out at the not so low price of $3.522 on Dec. 24, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in California has been mostly on the rise. The current average for the state is $3.651 a gallon, up nearly 13 cents, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. That's also just 6.6 cents a gallon short of the state's record for Jan. 24 of $3.717.

CAIRO - An Al Qaeda operative known as the "Uncatchable" has claimed responsibility for the attack on an Algerian gas complex that led to the deaths of at least 23 foreign hostages and raised new fears of Islamic extremism in North Africa. The comments by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamic militant and arms trafficker, came as the U.S., Britain and other countries sought to learn the fate of their citizens after Algerian authorities announced Sunday that the hostage death toll was expected to rise.

CAIRO - It was a bloody ordeal with tick-tock drama and a watching world. The hostages at a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert faced four harrowing days trapped between two dangers: Islamist militants who forced some of them to wear explosives belts, and the Algerian military, which showed no inclination to negotiate for their release. After the army carried out its "final assault" Saturday, Algerian officials said that at least 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed since gunmen startled the world and rallied Al Qaeda-linked extremists by storming the complex before dawn Wednesday.

CAIRO - One American was dead and dozens of foreign hostages were unaccounted for Friday after a military raid in the Sahara desert to retake a natural gas compound that was stormed this week by Islamist militants. The Algerian government said 573 Algerians and nearly 100 of an estimated 132 foreign hostages had been freed or had escaped. Much about the military operation, however, remained unclear, leaving officials in other countries frustrated by contradictory versions of what happened at the remote gas field near the Algerian-Libyan border.

CAIRO -- International officials Friday questioned the Algerian military's storming of a natural gas plant in the Sahara Desert that led to a firefight with Islamic militants and the deaths of an undisclosed number of hostages, including Westerners and Asians. There was no clear indication of exactly how many hostages were killed or wounded in Thursday's assault. Conflicting reports continued to emerge. The Algerian government said the army raid had ended while the British Foreign Office said the "terrorist incident remains ongoing.

CAIRO - The offensive by Algerian soldiers to free hostages at a natural gas complex has refocused world attention on the dangers of a lawless desert region bristling with gunrunners, smugglers and a virulent strain of Islamic ideology. Coming days after French airstrikes on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali, the raid Thursday killed or wounded many militants and an unspecified number of Western and Algerian hostages, the Algerian government said. Officials in Algiers, the capital, said late in the evening that they had wrapped up the assault on the compound near the Algerian-Libyan border deep in the Sahara desert.

Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has become an increasingly divisive issue over the last few years, with claims of damage to local water supplies and other health and environmental concerns dogging the process to extract natural gas from deep underground. The new documentary "FrackNation," directed by Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, looks to directly take on the Oscar-nominated anti-fracking doc "Gasland," pointing a finger toward that film and its director, Josh Fox, for any subsequent controversy regarding fracking.