Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Through public land leases, infrastructure subsidies, and some very expensive tax breaks, taxpayer money is supporting what could become one of the dirtiest, most destructive chapters in American energy history.
Last Sunday was a grim and painful anniversary for the people of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec. It was a year ago that a crude by rail train, which was carrying highly volatile crude from America’s Bakken fracking fields, derailed and exploded, effectively incinerating 47 people.
The barricades have been drawn. On the one side stands one of Britain’s leading unconventional energy companies, Cuadrilla. On the other side stands the rural village of Balcombe in the rolling hills of rural Sussex.
Fracking has led to a boom in sand mining in the US, with nearly 50 million tons of sand mined in 2011.
The volume of gas flared in the US has tripled in just five years due to the boom in shale oil. And the flares from the main oil shale fields are now so great they are visible from space
The new Hollywood film about fracking, which stars Matt Damon, entitled “Promised Land” could tap into the growing grassroots rebellion against the technique which is slowly sweeping across America.
New research by British scientists has claimed that the US shale gas boom is not curbing greenhouse gas emissions as much as its proponents claim.
