Today’s Essential Reads
FRACKING:
Oil Industry Focuses On Water Use
Estimates of how much water will be used in Texas in the coming decades to extract oil and gas from the ground were lowballed, and the petroleum industry needs to get a grip on its water use before the government does it for them, an industry symposium in Midland was told this week.
The fracking debate moved to the floor of the provincial legislature this week, where the government promised to get in front of the issue while con-tending it’s nothing new.
Learning Too Late of the Perils in Gas Well Leases
After Scott Ely and his father talked with salesmen from an energy company about signing the lease allowing gas drilling on their land in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said he felt certain it required the company to leave the property as good as new.
As Republican lawmakers rush headlong to open up land to fracking, their constituents should heed the cautionary tale told by the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania. The small town of 1,400 people agreed to let Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Company employ hydraulic fracturing on local land to obtain natural gas in 2008. The result: 18 water wells contaminated with methane.
BP OIL SPILL:
A group of Alabama scientists will participate in a public forum Saturday morning to discuss ongoing research that examines the impact of the BP oil spill.
After an oil spill at sea, toxic substances in the spilled oil can continue to damage marine life for a long time, even though the oil appears to be cleaned up, according to a new study by researchers from Norway, the UK, Spain and France.
Congressmen Ask Kenneth Feinberg to Make New Shrimper, Crabber Payments Retroactive
U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, and members of the Asian Pacific American Caucus sent a letter to oil spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg today, encouraging him to let previously compensated shrimpers and crabbers enjoy a new, more generous formula he announced earlier this week.
BP’s Alaska Probation Hearing: Day 2
Below are some notes from roughly eight hours I spent on Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Anchorage, covering the BP criminal probation hearing. The question at the heart of the hearing is whether BP should be held criminally negligent over a 2009 oil spill at its Lisburne Field on Alaska’s North Slope. Read here for the long, complicated background of the trial, which started Tuesday.
RADIATION:
Fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have completely melted and bored most of the way through a concrete floor, the reactor’s last line of defence before its steel outer casing, the plant’s operator said.
