Tracking the players in the ever-growing energy and environmental world.
Federal workplace watchdogs are warning that the boom in “fracking” is now exposing oilfield workers to hazards they can inhale.
Earlier this year, a study led by Dr. Charles “Chip” Groat for the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin made headlines for saying there was no link between fracking and groundwater contamination. (When we reported on the study in February, we noted that the study also found some serious issues around the safety […]
When peak electricity prices jump 50% next month, will it accomplish the Pubic Utility Commission’s goal of encouraging the construction of new power plants?
They’re small, and so far mostly just a nuisance, but one thing is clear: there are more of them, and their intensity may be increasing. Another earthquake hit Johnson county last night, measuring 2.7. That makes nine quakes since the string of tremors began June 5, by our count. So how does that stack up […]
Earlier today we reported on a series of quakes rattling Johnson County, outside of Fort Worth, Texas. The quakes haven’t caused any significant damage, but for a part of the state that has historically been seismically quiet, they’ve come as a surprise. There happen to be dozens of disposal wells — deep injection wells used for disposing […]
On March 23, 2005, an explosion rocked the Texas City BP refinery outside of Houston. Fifteen people were killed and 170 more were injured. Since then, BP has paid over $2 billion in settlements. And last November the company and the state reached an agreement on a $50 million payment from BP for the tragedy. […]
Update, November 2013: Quakes have now struck in a different area outside of Fort Worth near the town of Azle and Eagle Mountain Lake. You can read about that series of quakes (and see them mapped) here. Yet another earthquake has rattled North Texas. Early Tuesday morning, the city of Keene, 25 miles south of Fort […]
Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images What will the future of energy look like? Will natural gas make a rebound? What about oil? Will our dependency on it continue, or will it wane? We recently put some of these questions to Steve Coll of the New Yorker, whose new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power […]
For the first time, natural gas has tied with coal. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that energy generation from natural gas-fired plants became “virtually equal” to energy generation from coal-fired plants in April. Preliminary data shows that each fuel provides 32 percent of total energy generation, with natural gas generating 95.9 million megawatt […]
Just after midnight on March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. 11 million gallons of oil spilled into the water, which soon made its way to shore. It took three years to clean up. It was the worst oil spill in history. That was until two […]
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