Author: Sharon Kelly

A Pennsylvania jury handed down a $4.24 million verdict in a lawsuit centering on water contamination from negligent shale gas drilling in Dimock, PA, a tiny town that made international headlines for its flammable and toxic drinking water.Tags: D…

A Pennsylvania jury handed down a $4.2 million verdict in a lawsuit centering on water contamination from negligent shale gas drilling in Dimock, PA, a tiny town that made international headlines for its flammable and toxic drinking water.
The defenda…

The shift away from coal and towards renewable sources of energy is slowly beginning to gain traction, two recently-released reports from American and global energy agencies show.
“The biggest story is in the case of renewables,” International Ene…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been sued over toxic chemicals released into the air, water and land by the oil and gas industry, a coalition of nine environmental and open government groups announced today. The extraction of oil and gas releases more toxic pollution than any other industry except for

This week, New York Governor Cuomo announced that his state would ban fracking, due in large part to concerns about impacts on public health. But right across the border in Pennsylvania, one of the fastest-moving shale booms in the country still proceeds at breakneck speed. While Governor-elect Tom Wolf campaigned on

A new report, issued the same day the latest round of global climate negotiations opened in Peru, highlights the fracking industry’s slow expansion into nearly every continent, drawing attention not only to the potential harm from toxic pollution, dried-up water supplies and earthquakes, but also to the threat the shale

If you’re looking for the shale gas boom, northeastern Pennsylvania is the place to start. The Marcellus is the largest and fastest growing shale gas play in the U.S. and more than half of its 50 most productive wells were drilled in Susquehanna County in the northeast. Susquehanna and neighboring Bradford

Earlier this month, Chesapeake Energy Corp. revealed that it has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice, along with multiple states, over alleged wrong-doing in the company’s business dealings. Federal prosecutors and state attorneys have demanded that the company turn over documents, provide information, and give testimony in cases centering

This week’s indictment of former Massey Energy CEO, Don Blankenship, was as much a political turning point for West Virginia as it was a moment of reckoning economically for the coal industry writ large. It marked the wane of one of America’s last great robber barons and yet another ominous

Across the U.S., the shale gas industry’s arrival has been marked by wariness, not only of the environmental impacts associated with fracking, but also due to the oil and gas industry’s long history of flashy booms followed by devestating busts. In towns across the state, the lingering effects of past economic

Leave it to Washington’s top attack-dog lobbyist Richard Berman to verify what many always suspected: that the oil and gas industry uses dirty tricks to undermine science, vilify its critics and discredit journalists who cast doubt on the prudence of fossil fuels. In a speech at an industry conference in June,

If you want to see the future of the shale industry — what today’s drilling rush will leave behind — come to Bradford, Pennsylvania. A small city, it was home to one of America’s first energy booms, producing over three quarters of the world’s oil in 1877. A wooden oil rig

A worldwide transition to low carbon fuels could save the global economy as much as $1.8 trillion over the next two decades, according to two reports published Thursday by the Climate Policy Initiative. By switching to renewable energy sources, the high costs associated with extracting and transporting coal and gas could

For years, the oil and gas industry has worked to convince Americans that the rush to drill shale wells across the country will not only provide large corporations with lavish profits, but will also create enormous numbers of attractive and high-paid jobs, transforming the economies of small towns and cities

As evidence mounts concerning the hazards of fracking, the oil and gas industry is increasingly trying to redirect public discussion of the topic, focusing instead on the funding behind the environmental groups rather than the actual science of the matter. Aside from showing a certain desperation, the tactic is especially disingenuous

A Pennsylvania wastewater treatment plant alleged to have dumped toxic and radioactive materials into the Allegheny River has agreed to construct a new treatment facility, under a settlement announced Thursday with an environmental organization that had filed suit against the plant. Back in 2011, Pennsylvania made national headlines because the state’s

In Texas and North Dakota, where an oil rush triggered by the development of new fracking methods has taken many towns by storm, drillers have run into a major problem. While their shale wells extract valuable oil, natural gas also rises from the wells alongside that oil. That gas could be

On Tuesday, the White House released a report estimating that delaying action on climate change could cause $150 billion a year in damage to the U.S. economy. “These costs are not one-time, but are rather incurred year after year because of the permanent damage caused by increased climate change resulting from

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog, the inspector general released a scathing report on the agency’s failure to control leaks from the nation’s natural gas distribution system. The report, titled “Improvements Needed in EPA Efforts to Address Methane Emissions From Natural Gas Distribution Pipelines,” describes a string of failures

Last month,  Terry Greenwood, a Pennsylvania farmer whose water had been contaminated by fracking waste, died of cancer. He was 66 and the cause of death was a rare form of brain cancer. His death drew attention from around the globe in part because Mr. Greenwood was among the first farmers from