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CNN — Pennsylvania Democratic Senate Candidate John Fetterman said in a national television interview last week that he has always supported fracking in his state, but in 2018 Fetterman said he never supported the industry and “never” will. The comments are part of a long and often contradictory series of positions from the Senate candidate on the industry, which provides tens of thousands of jobs and contributes millions to Pennsylvania’s economy. [cut] Said he did not support fracking and never has in 2018 [cut] Called it a “stain” in 2016..

A new discovery off the coast of Bahrain is estimated to contain at least 80 billion barrels of tight oil, the kingdom's biggest ever find, its oil minister said on Wednesday. Independent appraisals by U.S.-based oil consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton and oilfield services company Halliburton had confirmed Bahrain's find of "highly significant quantities of oil in place ... with tight oil amounting to at least 80 billion barrels, and deep gas reserves in the region of 10-20 trillion cubic feet," Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa said. Russia's entire oil reserve is 80 billion barrels. Tight oil is a...

The United States is expected to churn out far more oil in 2019 than what international analysts originally forecasted. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based organization that helps coordinate energy policies for industrial countries, released its latest oil market report Friday, noting exceptional numbers for the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The agency reported U.S. oil production is expected to rise by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2019. While this number is lower than the record-smashing 2.1 million increase producers enjoyed in 2018, it’s more than double what the IEA initially expected to see in 2019. The forecast illustrates the...

The Sierra Club should start printing retractions (something they’ve been getting a lot of practice doing), because researchers from Yale University have concluded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, doesn’t contaminate drinking water! “[There is] no evidence of association with deeper brines or long-range migration of these compounds to the shallow aquifers” concludes the new study, which was published in the highly prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study, the largest of its kind, sampled 64 private water wells near fracking sites to determine if they could be contaminated by fracking fluids. “[The chemicals] are likely not a...

Finally, the Environmental Protection Agency has admitted what the oil and natural gas industry has been saying for more than 60 years: “Hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water sources.” EPA’s five-year-long study, requested by Congress, examined more than 950 pieces of information, including published papers and technical reports. While finding “potential vulnerabilities, some of which are not unique to hydraulic fracturing,” the report basically pronounces fracking safe. This conclusion should not be a surprise. In 2011, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told a congressional panel there has been no evidence linking fracking operations to...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is set to issue the first major federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing on Friday, with new mandates targeting oil and gas wells on public land. The Interior Department rule reflects years of work by regulators seeking to balance environmental interests and economic imperatives in setting baseline standards for the way wells are constructed and stimulated for oil and gas production. But the final version, set to be unveiled Friday by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, according to stakeholders familiar with the timeline, is unlikely to appease environmentalists who have argued for strong protections or oil...

Colorado's growth in crude oil reserves ranked third behind North Dakota and Texas in the latest survey of the amount of oil buried in fields across the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Nationally, crude oil reserves — oil that can be pumped from the ground under current economic conditions using existing technology — grew by 9 percent, or 3.1 billion barrels, in 2013 compared to 2012, the federal agency said. It's the fifth year in a row the U.S. oil reserves have grown, the EIA said, evidence that the proliferation of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing...

The transformation of American liberalism over the past half-century is nowhere more apparent than in the disputes now roiling a relatively obscure section of upstate New York. In 1965, as part of his "war on poverty," President Lyndon Johnson created the Appalachian Regional Commission. Among the areas to be served by the commission were the Southern Tier counties of New York state, including Broome, Tioga and Chemung. The commission's central aim was to "Increase job opportunities and per capita income in Appalachia to reach parity with the nation." Like so many Great Society antipoverty programs, the effort largely failed. The...

Arkansas, Colorado, Texas—all states of the historic western frontier. Conjuring up images of sprawling ranches, longhorn cattle, and cowboys, the relationship between the American west and the farming industry has endured for almost 200 years. However, modern reality in the form of the race for shale gas, is quickly catching up. As perpetually dry western states close in on a third year of drought and record breaking heat waves, the hydraulic fracturing industry is quickly out-competing ranchers in the scramble for increasingly limited water resources. "We’re not going to be able to raise the food we need," said Ben Rainbolt,...

J.R. Ewing never mentioned ceramic proppant on “Dallas.” Nor is it part of the plot in “Promised Land.” But that’s Hollywood. Drilling in the vast shale fields of Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere in the United States may not look much different from the drilling many people remember from earlier booms, but the technology used to break apart shale rocks – and hold the cracks open, allowing fossil fuels to flow into the well – has created a new wave of entrepreneurs. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing allow companies to pull oil and natural gas from dense rock formations by...

Besides exploring for and producing energy resources, the energy industry is tasked with debunking myths and clarifying techniques used in hydraulic fracturing. ... According to proponents of hydraulic fracturing, the facts surrounding chemical use are clear – water and sand comprise the majority of the mixture used. The remaining components used to deliver the water down the wellbore and position the sand in fractures created in the formation – while they can probably be found in the kitchen cupboard – are proprietary ingredients. ~~snip~~“This is really a debate on a much larger scale; it has a bearing on the future...

The Obama administration will soon issue sweeping new environmental safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural gas wells on all lands eventually could follow. The rules, which are likely to be unveiled by the Interior Department within days, are designed to address concerns that the method of extracting natural gas known as "fracking" can contaminate groundwater. Among other things, they create new guidelines for constructing wells and treating waste water, according to a draft of the proposed rules reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. ~~snip~~The fracking rules apply to natural gas drilling on...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn an administrative order it filed against Fort Worth-based Range Resources over water contamination in Parker County. The EPA filed the “imminent and substantial endangerment order” in December 2010 and said Range’s drilling in Parker County had caused or contributed to the contamination of at least two residential drinking water wells. The agency ordered Range to stop the contamination, provide drinking water to the two residences and provide methane gas monitors to the homeowners, among other measures. Range’s challenge against the order was pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit...

A state judge’s decision this week supporting the rights of individual towns to determine whether to allow hydraulic fracturing has added a new wrinkle to the fight over the natural gas drilling process in New York. Parties on all sides are trying to figure out what the ruling will mean, but a consensus emerged on Wednesday that there will be further court challenges and delays over when, how and where the process, known as hydrofracking, will be allowed in the state, and by whom. Officials of natural gas companies voiced concern that such local restrictions could render more areas of...

A study by Penn State researchers is being revised after test results apparently linking increased bromide in some water wells to Marcellus Shale gas drilling were traced instead to a lab error. An error notice was published on Nov. 22 on the website of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, which funded the study and released it in late October. According to the notice, an accredited laboratory contracted by the researchers incorrectly reported the bromide concentration data that was used in the original report. Updated data showed that increased bromide levels were recorded in one of 42 water wells, not seven...

San Leon Energy Plc, the natural gas explorer backed by billionaire George Soros and Blackrock Inc., expects its Polish shale licenses to be more profitable than U.S. gas deposits, the company's exploration director said. Read more: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/barnett_shale/2011/09/firm-backed-by-billionaire-george-soros-says-polish-shale-gas-to-be-more-profitable-than-us-.html#ixzz1YWNZWYM2

Issuing a one-year moratorium on "fracking," Gov. Chris Christie today issued a conditional veto of S-2576, recommending changes to the legislation that balances protecting New Jersey’s environment and drinking water and encouraging cleaner energy alongside the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. As currently written, S-2576 would permanently prohibit fracking in New Jersey, a drilling technique used for the exploration or production of natural gas, even as concurrent studies on the practice are underway by the federal government and no known natural gas deposits necessitating use of the fracking process have been proposed for development in New Jersey. “I...

So it turns out hydraulic fracturing — the natural-gas-extraction technique being used to good effect in Pennsylvania and elsewhere — might dirty up the air and maybe even the groundwater. Horrors! Surely this is the first time energy development has had deleterious environmental effects. Sure — the first time, except for every other time. The cold reality is that every energy-producing strategy, from wind and water to coal and nukes and even solar, does damage at some level. "Fracking," as hydraulic fracturing is known, seems to do less damage than most, and it's producing the cleanest-burning fossil fuel in staggering...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, seeing increased domestic natural gas production as a linchpin in its long-term energy strategy, has named a panel of experts to find ways to make hydraulic fracturing, a fast-growing method of extracting natural gas, safer and cleaner. The administration hopes to avoid the safety and regulatory breakdowns that led to the Deepwater Horizon blowout a year ago as it oversees onshore drilling using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has asked the panel’s seven experts, to be led by John Deutch, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and deputy...

More Print Critics of hydraulic fracturing were quick to pounce on last week's well blowout in Pennsylvania as proof that the controversial method of extracting natural gas is an environmental threat. That includes state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who just days earlier rashly overreached and vowed to sue the federal government unless it commits within 30 days to conducting a full review of regulations that would allow natural-gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin. At issue is fracking -- the controversial process in which a high-pressure mix of water, chemicals and sand is used to extract natural gas from rock...