Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
With every passing day the downside of America’s burgeoning fracking boom becomes apparent. The industry has done much to portray fracked gas as a clean fuel. But its dirty secrets are slowly and painfully being revealed.
New scientific research has been published which torpedoes the idea that shale gas should be seen as a clean bridging fuel.
They came in their thousands from across the Sunshine State. On Saturday, the largest anti-fracking rally and protest in California's history took place in the state capital of Sacramento.
Fracking operations at one site in the state of Ohio remain suspended until further notice after five small earthquakes over a period of twenty four hours earlier this week.
A new video parody, entitled “Frack Water”, portrays a Jerry Brown look-alike outside a southern California oil field accompanied by a California oil industry representative. It's the latest escalation in Oil Change International's "Big Oil Brown" campaign, pushing the governor to impose a ban on fracking for oil and gas in California.
US regulators reacted to the string of recent crude by rail accidents yesterday by ordering that companies shipping crude out of North Dakota's Bakken fracking fields must undertake extensive testing for signs of dangerous volatility.
California remains gripped in a vice-like drought, with last year being the driest on record in the state. Last month, the situation was so bad that it prompted Governor Jerry Brown to declare that the sunshine state was in a drought emergency. "We ought to be ready for a long, continued, persistent effort to restrain our water use," Brown said.
Slowly the science is catching up with fracking. Nearly every month a new scientific paper is published warning of the serious ecological or health harm caused by the controversial process.
Instead of the rousing call to action on the greatest challenge of our generation that it could have been, what this speech will be remembered for is the President's defense of disastrous energy policy that is doomed to fail.
