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New Threat to the Gulf: Radioactive Wastewater Dumped Off Louisiana Coast

The New York Times is reporting that a 1990 “confidential study” by the American Petroleum Institute concluded that radium in drilling wastewater dumped off the Louisiana coast posed “potentially...

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The Oil and Gas Industry’s 800-Pound Gorilla: RADIATION

An odd sort of perfect storm – involving a high-profile New York Times energy series, a quirky documentary that just missed the Oscar and federal BP-spill recovery plans – may finally address the...

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Arkansas Quake Is Its Most Powerful in 35 Years

A 4.7-magnitude earthquake that researchers described as the largest in Arkansas in 35 years was recorded late Sunday night near Greenbrier. It was the latest in a swarm of quakes that has bedeviled...

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Letting Oil and Gas Companies Run Amuck: Lack of Enforcement Rather than Lack...

The New York Times natural gas series by Ian Urbina continues to illustrate the lack of government oversight in the "energy extraction" industry, but I take some issue with the implication that there...

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Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse: Are Oil and Gas Companies...

The BP spill certainly illustrates just how little forethought went into a handling a deep-water drilling disaster, with a pathetic level of planning and not even so much as a test for the 2 million...

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Asleep at the Wheel: EPA Looks the Other Way as Oil and Gas Companies Dump...

Guess who turns up as a double-talking, industry-coddling government bureaucrat in the latest installment of the New York Times "natural gas pollution" series? That’s right, our friend Carol M....

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Gas drilling near Yellowstone: danger of another blowout?

Last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster focused international attention on offshore well blowouts. But they happen more often onshore, with dangerous effect: release of flammable and toxic gases, spills...

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The “Radiation Issue” Continues to Haunt Oil and Gas Industry

After years of being an issue “too large to address,” both mainstream media and government regulators are finally acknowledging that radioactive wastewater is a huge problem for energy production – not...

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Damage Control: Oil and Gas Industry Reeling from Bad Press

You can tell that Ian Urbina’s New York Times series on natural-gas drilling is hitting an industry nerve when the third-party "damage control" machine roars to life. It looks to me like an expensive...

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Benjamin Grumbles, Former Bush EPA Official: ‘Fracking’ Exemption Went Too Far

When Benjamin Grumbles was assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency in the George W. Bush administration, he oversaw the release of a 2004 EPA report that determined...

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Wheels Coming Off: Former EPA Official Blows Whistle on Regulatory Exemption...

When a high-ranking George W. Bush-era EPA official starts blowing the whistle on the triumph of politics over the environment – confirming that a business-friendly “fracking exemption” went way too...

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API Parades Workers Through Capitol to Tamp Down Outrage Over Radioactive Waste

In D.C. they call it a “fly-in.” You recruit a handful of like-minded allies and give them a trip to Washington – and all they have to do is say the right things to some very important people. But...

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Company faces potential penalty for saltwater release

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has issued a compliance order and notice of potential penalty against a company whose saltwater disposal lines over a 10-month period ruptured in more...

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Texas Lawmaker: What’s in All that Fracking Fluid?

As we watch in horror as Japan struggles to deal with its widening nuclear crisis, we'll pause to note a U.S. energy regulation milestone: A Texas lawmaker (and a conservative one at that) has...

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