The fracking boom happened so quickly that nobody had any time to deal with the consequences. Not only did politicians not anticipate regulations, allowing the industry to operate in a kind of free-fire zone, but the industry didn’t recognize the massive amounts of limited resources they would need to continue fracking in the future. Specifically, [...]

I recall hearing quite a bit from various governors that the US is the “Saudi Arabia of coal” or the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” or whatever natural resource they had in abundance. Now, according to AP energy writer Jonathan Fahey, the US verges on becoming the Saudi Arabia… of oil. U.S. oil output is surging [...]

For all the influence and power in fracking today, if the US were to export natural gas that would magnify a hundred fold. Think about the difference between Saudi Arabia only supplying their domestic industries with oil fuel and supplying the world. There’s no comparison. Natural gas has traditionally been very difficult to export, but [...]

Here’s a story about the power of independent, outside movements to advance policy arguments. The story about fracking in New York was that it would simply happen, without much resistance from the state government. The special interests were too powerful, there was too much money at stake. In fact, nationally, the fracking boom is key [...]

The biggest reason for the decline in greenhouse gas emissions over the past couple years is the replacement of dirty coal with natural gas to generate electricity. But this will not last if the fracking that has unlocked so much natural gas leads to the release of underground methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Among all [...]

The House of Representatives passed their one-year drought relief bill by a relatively thin margin yesterday, 223-197. They needed 35 votes from Democrats to get it across the line, as 46 Republicans begged off the bill. Here’s the roll call. The House passed this on the last possible day of the session before the August [...]

A couple judicial rulings recently actually went against corporate America in favor of consumers and residents, in such a rare fashion that I feel compelled to report on it. First, in Pennsylvania a state appellate court delivered what may be one of the first rulings against expanded hydraulic fracturing in a state with plenty of [...]

A new study of the Marcellus Shale region, which has been one of the most prominent places for hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, shows that fluids buried deep under the surface are seeping into drinking water. The study does not indict fracking as the cause or claim that fracking fluids are among those finding their [...]

Hydraulic fracturing, the process of extracting natural gas from rock and shale by hitting it with high-pressure water and chemicals to cause large fissures, has come to Southern California, despite the major earthquake potential here and the documented evidence that fracking leads to elevated seismic activity. Yesterday, Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director behind the anti-fracking [...]

This is a couple days old, but it’s pretty remarkable, so let’s have at it. The Obama Administration has been threatening for weeks to issue “tough” guidelines on hydraulic fracturing, the first federal regulations on the practice. They always paired this with an invocation of support for the “safe and responsible production of domestic natural [...]

Cross-Posted From Nation of Change The race is on, full-steam ahead for the United States shale gas industry [PDF] in its quest to pipe and export gas obtained via the hydraulic fracturing process to lucrative global markets. On April 16, Cheniere Energy Inc. became the first corporation in the United States to receive approval by the Federal Energy [...]