Posted May 16, 2013 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
With the release of its revised draft rules for hydraulic fracturing, BLM signaled to industry that it’s business-as-usual when it comes to oil and gas drilling and fracking on public lands. And it also signaled to the people who live,...continued→
Posted May 16, 2013 by Briana Mordick in Curbing Pollution, Health and the Environment
Welcome to the first in a series of blogs that will attempt to separate science from fiction on subjects including hydraulic fracturing, oil and gas production, geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide, and more. Hydraulic fracturing, a practice used in the...continued→
Posted February 12, 2013 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
Last year the BLM issued a draft rule for well stimulation (including hydraulic fracturing) under federal leases. The original proposal included limited new rules for chemical disclosure, mechanical integrity, and waste water handling. After it received extensive public comment, the BLM...continued→
Posted December 4, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment
The American Geophysical Union is holding its Fall Meeting in San Francisco this week. The program includes multiple presentations on induced seismicity (a.k.a. earthquakes) caused by oil and gas production activities. Here are some highlights: Scientists at the University of...continued→
Posted November 6, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment
The British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) recently released a report documenting a series of earthquakes in the Horn River Basin in northeast British Columbia. The researchers concluded that these earthquakes were caused by hydraulic fracturing. A total of 38...continued→
Posted October 16, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) recently released three publications that are relevant to natural gas extraction in the northeastern United States. Each study contributes important information to our understanding of the actual and potential environmental impacts of natural gas...continued→
Posted September 12, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
NRDC and a coalition of other environmental groups recently submitted comments on new rules proposed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) governing well stimulation*, including hydraulic fracturing, of oil and gas wells drilled on public land. BLM is the...continued→
Posted June 13, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
The Western Energy Alliance, a trade association representing more than 400 companies involved in oil and gas production, released a report on the supposed economic impacts of the new proposed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rules for oil and gas...continued→
Posted May 10, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
Despite being similar processes and posing similar risks to the environment, the way hydraulic fracturing is regulated is very different from the way the underground injection of other fluids is regulated. This difference was made even more apparent when, on...continued→
Posted April 18, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment
Researchers at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) recently published an abstract that links an increase in earthquakes across the middle of the US to oil and natural gas production activities. The researchers found that the number of earthquakes with...continued→
Posted April 6, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Solving Global Warming
Geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important tool for curbing the human-induced climate change caused by our addiction to burning fossil fuels. But a new paper from researchers at Princeton suggests that the very process of getting those...continued→
Posted March 7, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and WIld Places
The technology used to get oil and gas out of the ground has evolved extremely rapidly but regulation has unfortunately not kept pace. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recognized this, stating that the Bureau of Land Management’s “current regulations specific to...continued→
Posted January 12, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment, Solving Global Warming
Two separate investigations have found no evidence to suggest that CO2 is leaking from the Weyburn-Midale CO2-EOR field in Saskatchewan, Canada. In January of last year the Kerr family, who owns property near the Weyburn field, feared that their groundwater...continued→
Posted January 3, 2012 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment
Injection of oil and gas waste water into a disposal well is suspected as the cause for a swarm of earthquakes around Youngstown, Ohio. A magnitude 4.0 earthquake on New Year’s Eve was the biggest of 11 earthquakes that occurred...continued→
Posted December 9, 2011 by Briana Mordick in Health and the Environment
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft report of its investigation of groundwater contamination near Pavillion, WY. It appears likely that groundwater in Pavillion was contaminated by the hydraulic fracturing process itself, rather than by surface spills or leaks...continued→
Switchboard is the staff blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group. For more about our work, including in-depth policy documents, action alerts and ways you can contribute, visit NRDC.org.
