As drilling activity in the onshore US continues to grow, more and more attention is being paid to the environmental effects of exploration and production. Media stories abound about groundwater contamination, the demand for fresh water from hydraulic fracturing, increased air emissions from exploration and production, controversy over pipeline condemnation…
On December 20, the Office of Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency issued its “Response to Congressional Inquiry Regarding the EPA’s Emergency Order to the Range Resources Gas Drilling Company.” The report was requested by Congress as a result of an emergency order issued by the Dallas regional office…
Suppose that the fluids injected into a disposal well migrate beyond the boundary of the tract where the well is located; does that incursion of the injected fluids into and under the neighbor’s property constitute a trespass? Until recently, this question had never been addressed by a Texas appellate…
A group of environmentally conscious social and investor organizations has produced a report, Disclosing the Facts: Transparency and Risk in Hydrualic Fracturing Operations. The report grades companies on how well they report risks attendant to operations in the major US shale plays. The report is a collaboration of four organizations:…
A report recently released by the University of Texas’ Cockrell School of Engineering, “Measurements of methane emissions at natural gas production sites in the United States,” has re-energized the debate between industry and environmental groups over whether natural gas is good for the environment. UT’s report is a peer-reviewed paper…
I subscribe to the Economist, and it recently sent its subscribers a booklet, Pocket World in Figures, that contains rankings of 198 countries in categories ranging from longest river to biggest cities to number of refugees to living standards, etc. Here are some interesting statistics related to energy from that…
The historic floods in Colorado have inundated hundreds of oil and gas wells, dislodging tanks and threatening significant pollution of the flood water. The disaster has raised questions across the country about regulation of drillsite locations in areas that could be subject to flooding. The Colorado Oil and Gas…
I subscribe to a news clip service on the oil and gas industry, where I get a lot of my ideas for this blog. Almost half of the news stories for August 20 had something to do with hydraulic fracturing (“fracing” or “fracking” – the latter spelling seems to have become…
I recently ran across an article on the Energy In Depth website titled “Turning Natural Gas Into Water: Hydraulic Fracturing Doesn’t Deplete Water Supplies.” Energy In Depth is a website of the Independent Petroleum Association of America dedicated to “a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the…
Those who visit my blog regularly know that I love charts and graphs. Below is a Sankey diagram produced by Lawrence Livermore Labs for the Department of Energy. Sankey diagrams are named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey, who used this type of diagram in 1898 in…