shutterstock_30322192.jpg Most people think of downtown Houston, Texas as ground zero for the oil and gas industry. Houston, after all, serves as home base for corporate headquarters of oil and gas giants, including the likes of BP America, ConocoPhillips, and Shell Oil Company, to name a few. Comparably speaking, few would think of Wilmington,
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DeSmogBlog: Exposed: Pennsylvania Act 13 Overturned by Supreme Court, Originally an ALEC Model Bill
alec-exposed-600×400.jpeg On July 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled PA Act 13 unconstitutional. The bill would have stripped away local zoning laws, eliminated the legal concept of a Home Rule Charter, limited private property rights, and in the process, completely disempowered town, city, municipal and county governments, particularly when it comes to shale gas
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Does Red Leaf’s "EcoShale" Technology Greenwash Oil Shale Extraction?
Red Leaf EcoShale.png At the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008, former Vice President Al Gore called the possibility of fossil fuel corporations extracting oil shale "utter insanity." Insanity, though, doesn't serve as a hinderance for deeply entrenched and powerful fossil fuel interests. Oil shale, also known as kerogen, should not be confused with
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Oil Sands Fact Check: New API Front Group
shutterstock_48011344.jpg How do you sell a rotten bag of goods? Rule number one of effective propaganda: repackage it into something seemingly less grotesque. In that spirit, the Houston Chronicle recently reported the American Petroleum Institute (API) has created yet another front group, this one to promote tar sands crude, one of the dirtiest sources of fuel in the world, as a
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: EOG Resources: The Gas Corporation That Does It All From Cradle to Grave
EOG Resources.jpg DeSmogBlog, on multiple occasions, has reported that the damage caused by hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" in the unconventional oil and gas industry goes far beyond water contamination, put in the spotlight by the documentary film "Gasland." The multi-pronged harms were tackled in a comprehensive manner in our report, "Fracking the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Sand Land: Frac Sand Mining in Western Wisconsin – Video Report by DeSmogBlog
Sand mine.jpg The rush to drill for unconventional gas, enabled by a process popularly known as "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing, has brought with it much collateral damage. Close observers know about contaminated water, earthquakes, and climate change impacts of the shale gas boom, but few look at the entire life
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: New Documentary "Rational Middle": Oil and Gas Advertising in Disguise
Rational Middle Logo.jpeg The "Rational Middle Energy Series," directed and produced by Gregory Kallenberg, is hot off the film rolls and has already been screened at an influential venue: the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. Kallenberg also directed and produced the documentary film "Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for An Energy Future,"
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Was Andrew Cuomo’s NY Fracking "Sacrifice Zone" Plan Hatched by NRDC?
shutterstock_15465343 (2).jpg Has New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just made the southern tier of the state a "sacrifice zone," as alleged by award-winning author and "fracktivist," Sandra Steingraber? Was it a plot hatched by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)? The signs pointing to both possibilities are troublesome, to say
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: TransCanada’s Latest Extreme Energy Export Pipelines in the U.S. and Canada
shutterstock_48011347.jpg TransCanada was once in the limelight and targeted for its Keystone XL pipeline project. Now, with few eyes watching, it is pushing along two key pipeline projects that would bring two respective forms of what energy geopolitics scholar Michael Klare calls "extreme energy" to lucrative export markets. Pipeline one: the southern
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Massey WV Coal Battle Take Two: Erie, CO Citizens Fight Fracking
shutterstock_15465343 (1).jpg Erie, CO meet Naoma, WV. Though seemingly different battles over different ecologically hazardous extractive processes — hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for unconventional gas versus mountaintop removal for coal — the two battles are one in the same and direct parallels of one another. On June 2, a coalition of activist organizations
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Public Accountability Initiative Produces New Report on SUNY Buffalo’s "Shill Gas Study"
PAI Logo.jpg The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) has upped the ante on DeSmogBlog's reporting on what we coined a "Shill Gas Study" recently conducted by SUNY Buffalo. In our critique of the "study" we pointed out the fact that all of the authors and nearly the entire peer review board of the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: New Shill Gas Study Published by SUNY Buffalo Institute With Heavy Industry Ties
shutterstock_15465343.jpg When does a study on the unconventional shale gas industry become a "shill gas study"? The quick answer: when nearly everyone writing and peer reviewing it has close ties to the industry they're purportedly doing an "objective" study on. The newest kid on the block: a recent study published by
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: ALEC Wasn’t First Industry Trojan Horse Behind Fracking Disclosure Bill – Enter Council of State Governments
shutterstock_95581429.jpg 19th Century German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, "If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made." The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), put on the map by the Center for Media and Democracy in its "ALEC Exposed" project, is the archetype of von Bismarck's truism. So too are the fracking chemical
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: EPA Shale Gas Emissions Standards: "Too Little, Too Late"
Picture 4.png The gas industry received a blow yesterday when the nonprofit group Physicians, Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) released a joint statement by Professors Anthony Ingraffea and Robert Howarth of Cornell University. According to the release the EPA’s new emissions standards for methane and volatile organics from
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: 2008 Shell Nigeria Oil Spill 60 Times Larger Than Originally Claimed
shutterstock_88735852.jpg Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) dropped a bombshell early this week, unveiling documents pertaining to the Royal Dutch Shell Oil 2008 Bodo oil pipeline spill. The documents indicate that the Shell spill released 60 times the amount of oil Shell had originally reported in
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Rendell and Ridge: From "Militant" Labelers to Terrorist Enablers
Ed Rendell MEK.jpg A new chapter has been added to the shale gas industry's eco-terrorism, counterinsurgency and psychological operations saga. In March, NBC News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff revealed that many prominent U.S. public officials are on the payroll of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group labeled by the U.S. State Department as a
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Obama Sojourns to "Pipeline Crossroads of the World" for Campaign Speech
Cushing .jpg It's the multi-pronged fight that never seems to end. The Alberta Tar Sands have been near the forefront of the North American energy and climate debate, thanks in large part to growing public concern and grassroots efforts like Tar Sands Action, a campaign led by climate activists to block construction of the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Cornell Team Redux: Shale Gas a Disaster for Climate
Picture 3.png Unconventional gas offers no advantage over other fossil fuels when considering its impact on the climate, according to a new report from a group of researchers at Cornell University. The Cornell Team, who made waves in the shale debate with groundbreaking research on methane leakage in gas production
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Demise of Keystone XL Means More Bakken Shale Gas Flaring
NA-Pipeline-Map-Theodora.png Damned if we do, damned if we don't – this is the CliffsNotes version of the ongoing Keystone XL pipeline debate. President Barack Obama recently halted TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project, which would bring tar sands crude, or dilluted bitumen ("dilbit") from Alberta, B.C. through the heart of the U.S., to
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: 72 Percent of Ohioans Want A Fracking Moratorium, Citing Need For More Study
The unconventional gas industry's latest rush in the United States will land it in the state of Ohio, but a recent poll shows that the state's residents are not rolling out the red carpet for an industry famous for threatening drinking water supplies, causing earthquakes, noise and air pollution and
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