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Tracking the players in the ever-growing energy and environmental world.

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January 10, 2012

The Year in Texas Energy: More Watts, More Wind

Graph by ERCOT Energy Use for 2010 and 2011 The numbers are in for electricity use for Texas in 2011 (more specifically, the 85 percent of the state in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid), and there are some interesting takeaways. It’s not surprising that with extreme heat and drought, energy demand increased in 2011: Energy […]

January 9, 2012

Now Read This: Our Top 5 Posts

Earthquakes, fracking and solar power are all hot topics on StateImpact Texas these days. In case you missed any of them, here are our top five stories published in the last week: What We Know About Fracking Activity and the Ohio Earthquake: A 4.0-magnitude earthquake struck Youngstown, Ohio on New Year’s Eve, the eleventh quake […]

January 6, 2012

Chesapeake Fracking Well Fire in Oklahoma

Fracking has suffered some particularly bad PR over the past few months. First, the EPA linked the hydraulic fracturing drilling process (where a mix of water, sand and chemicals are blasted deep underground through horizontal wells to release oil and gas deposits) to contamination of water in Wyoming. Then, on New Year’s Eve an intense […]

January 5, 2012

What You Need to Know About Earthquakes and Fracking

After a 4.0 earthquake struck Youngstown, Ohio Saturday, some people were scratching their heads and asking, did hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) cause this? After all, it was the eleventh quake since March, and the most intense. On top of that, all of the quakes have been centered around a deep well used to dispose of […]

January 2, 2012

What We Know About Fracking Activity and the Ohio Earthquake

What happened with the earthquake in Ohio over the weekend, and how is it linked to fracking? Here’s what we know: The earthquake measured 4.0, the largest in Ohio this year. The New York Times is reporting that Ohio officials say the earthquake wasn’t caused by fracking, but rather by injection wells disposing of used […]

December 30, 2011

Where Not to Put the Keystone XL Pipeline

The Canadian company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring crude from the country’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, got a little gift to end out the year from the Nebraska government this week: a map of where not to put the pipeline. The pipeline ran into a snag earlier this year […]

December 29, 2011

Big Gains for Big Energy on Stock Market

It’s been a booming year for drilling in Texas, with more new wells drilled than last year and 381 million barrels of oil produced. The companies behind this drilling have found fortune not only in the ground but also in the stock market. USA Today looks at the top ten corporate stocks for the year and […]

A Deeper Understanding of Deepwater Drilling and Energy Dependence

Courtroom wrangling continues over who is legally culpable for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but history is already making its own judgments. In the new book “Drilling Down, the Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma,” co-written by Dr. Tad Patzek, the disaster is examined through the lens of a culture that seeks out oil from […]

December 28, 2011

BP’s New Ad Has Surprising Cameo

A new television ad from oil giant BP is getting some extra attention this week after viewers noticed an unexpected cameo. As part of a campaign to promote the company’s work to clean up areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, which released nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf, […]

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