Author: Sharon Kelly

Several years ago, Utah public health officials realized they had a big problem on their hands — one with national implications as other states were racing to increase oil and gas drilling. Smog levels in the state’s rural Uintah basin were rivaling those found in Los Angeles or Houston on

A Pennsylvania industrial wastewater treatment plant has been illegally accepting oil and gas wastewater and polluting the Allegheny river with radioactive waste and other pollutants, according to an environmental group which announced today that it is suing the plant.   “Waste Treatment Corporation has been illegally discharging oil and gas

America is in the midst of the biggest onshore oil and gas rush in recent history, with excitement spreading across the U.S. Oil and gas companies have cashed in on this frenzied excitement by courting huge investment domestically and abroad. But a growing chorus of independent analysts and law enforcement

The key takeaway from President Obama’s major climate change announcement this week was his intent to batten down on coal. But if history is any indication, the man Mr. Obama selected to run the Department of Energy may have different plans. Ernest J. Moniz has a long history of supporting

Last Friday in Philadelphia, a small crowd gathered outside the Franklin Institute, protest signs in hand. Only a few days before, word went out that Governor Tom Corbett, one of the nation’s least popular governors, would be in Philadelphia, a city that has borne the brunt of many of Mr.

“Extreme by any measure.” Those four words were used by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 2009 decision to describe judicial corruption and corporate influence in the West Virginia courts. That opinion by the nation’s highest court famously reversed the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals justices who had

Three years ago, 29 miners died at the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine. It was the worst mining disaster in decades, caused by a methane-fueled blast that was so strong it killed miners more than a mile away and left steel rail lines tangled. Appalachia has seen its share

Amid all the pushback to fracking, most of the attention has focused on what drillers put into the ground. The amount of water used. The chemicals that make up energy companies’ secret mix. Whether these dangerous chemicals will contaminate our drinking water. But one of the biggest problems of fracking,

Virtually anyone who has followed the onshore drilling bonanza knows the name Aubrey McClendon and the company he co-founded, Chesapeake Energy. McClendon was the hard-driving CEO and chairman of one of America’s most aggressive drilling companies, but he was brought down earlier this year after a string of financial scandals

A year ago, President Obama set forth his vision of America’s energy policy. “We need an energy strategy for the future,” he said in a message still prominently displayed on the White House website, “an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.” During the

For the past several years, the shale gas industry has argued that oversight of fracking is getting tighter and that the amount of methane gas leaking from their wells is less than some have speculated. In Pennsylvania, however, the opposite is true, according to a white paper delivered to New

It was meant to go unnoticed. A small announcement out of a commissioners’ meeting signaled plans to transport fracking wastewater by barge down the Ohio River. But it caught the eye of locals and offers a further reminder of why handling and disposal of the wastewater is truly one of

When oil and gas executives gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to discuss the state of the industry shortly after Obama won re-election, they raised a recurring complaint. “We now face four more years of regulatory uncertainty,” said Randy Alpert, an official with Consol energy told gathered shale gas executives. Penny Seipel,

Next month Focus Features releases Matt Damon’s new movie and the oil and gas industry is worried sick about it. The movie, Promised Land, is about a Pennsylvania farm town deciding whether to go forward with shale gas drilling after a team of landmen arrives in the area. Damon plays

When Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer stepped to the mic at a shale oil and gas conference earlier this month, he offered one of his most candid descriptions to date of how he sees his mission as a regulator…

When the shale gas industry met last week in Pittsburgh, none other than Karl Rove gave the keynote speech, regaling the audience with a lengthy patriotic anecdote comparing the fossil fuel dillers to the US Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden.
Havin…

As Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast last month, tens of thousands of landowners with oil and gas leases faced an especially acute concern: would they get help from FEMA if their properties were damaged or destroyed by the storm?
The question ari…

As the shale gas boom has brought oil and gas drilling closer and closer to home for many Americans, banking and real estate experts have found that drilling may pose significant risks involving property values, homeowners, and mortgage lenders. New documents obtained by DeSmogBlog show that the Federal Emergency Management