In April, a video surfaced of Dr. Al Aremendariz, the regional director for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), speaking to a group of locals in Dish, Texas about how to enforce pollution rules. “It was kinda like how the Romans used to conquer those villages in the Mediterranean,” Armendariz told the group. “They’d go into a little Turkish […]

Federal workplace watchdogs are warning that the boom in “fracking” is now exposing oilfield workers to hazards they can inhale.

The sun is setting for drillers wanting a new piece of the Gulf. There’s one more day to bid on leases to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will hold a sale of nearly 38 million acres of offshore leases Wednesday. Those leases run in […]

If you were hoping to get in on some of the action in offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, time is running out. On Thursday the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) gave final notice of an upcoming sale of nearly 38 million acres of offshore leases. Those leases run an area […]

Gas prices are going down. For a state heavy on drilling, how low is too low?

You can read our follow-up reporting on this story here. April 25, 2012 UPDATE: This week OSHA issued ten citations for “serious violations” by High Roller Wells, which operates the disposal well. You can read more about those citations here.  Three people have been injured after an explosion and fire at a disposal well in […]

Why is there such little interest from the public about new drilling leases in the Gulf?

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 […]