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For years politicians in Britain have been looking with increasing envy at the burgeoning shale boom in the US, believing that it could be replicated in the UK.

Its hotting up down in Ohio between the oil industry and locals who oppose the dumping of millions of gallons of potentially toxic waste water.

Could this be the fracking industry’s Silent Spring moment? One of the most alarming aspects of fracking is how little we understand the long term risks of the technology. As the shale boom explodes in the US, concerns about the health and environmental impacts have been largely ignored in the rush to frack.

As the shale gas revolution continues a pace in North America, so does its wider environmental impact. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the burgeoning demand for frac-sand.

Just when fracking was due to take centre stage in Colorado’s November elections, two of the State’s top Democrats have agreed to a compromise deal, which you could argue will leave Colorado’s communities unprotected on the front-line of the fracking boom.

If there is one country where Shell’s broken promises ring hollower than anywhere else it is in Nigeria.

Earlier this week in London, in a novel action which some are calling a “playtest”, over 50 young children gathered outside Shell's London headquarters to protest against the oil giant’s Arctic drilling programme and its controversial collaboration with the iconic children’s toy-maker, Lego.

The oil industry’s public relations arm, the American Petroleum Institute (API), has reached new lows in its attempts to twist the on-going debate about the safety of crude-by-rail trains in the US.

Big Oil has always been a bad, bad loser. And it is therefore no surprise that it has threatened to sue a small coastal city in Maine which on Monday night struck an historical blow against the industry by banning the export of tar sands from its harbour.

Yet another pivotal battle is brewing in Canada, over a little-known pipeline labelled the “mother of all pipelines” by the country’s First Nations.