A new commentary in Nature Reviews Microbiology by Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia and her colleagues argues for further in-depth assessments of the impacts of dispersants on microorganisms to guide their use in response to future oil spills. Chemical dispersants are widely used in emergency responses to oil spills in marine environments as […]
Shell gets high power support for plans to drill in the Arctic
Royal Dutch Shell has developed safeguards to conduct offshore oil exploration in the Arctic and U.S. President says he’s impressed with what he sees. Obama says his administration delayed Shell’s application for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska until it could provide necessary assurances. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has […]
Oil spill cleanup made easier
In Ohio, scientists are experimenting with a mesh that could clean up oil spills and save a lot of money in the process. Research out of Ohio State University’s nano lab has developed a type of steel mesh which traps oil, while letting water flow through it. The high-tech mesh is coated in a nearly […]
Oil industry abandons more wells
The drop in oil prices coupled with new regulations and changes in drilling have prompted a lot of junior oil companies to walk away from their wells. In fact the numbers of orphaned wells have jumped dramatically, going from 162 to 702 in the past year. The problem now is the clean up. For the past […]
Comment: Alberta climate change minister has her work cut out for herself
Diana McQueen has set the bar high in her role as minister for climate change in Alberta. To start with, McQueen is promising Alberta will meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets. “I have a mandate from the premier to meet those reduction targets,” McQueen said. “We will continue to have a strong economy while meeting the 2020 […]
Comment: Stop drilling in the Arctic
In late March, the U.S. Department of the Interior swung the door wide open to drilling in the remote waters of the Arctic Ocean when it announced that it was reaffirming controversial Bush-era leases for the Chukchi Sea. In 2008, the Bush administration offered nearly 30 million acres of remote and poorly understood ocean to […]
Have some enviro groups gone too far comparing fracking to rape?
Environmental activist Sharon Wilson of Earthworks seems to have started a new rallying call against the oil and gas industry by claiming that a recently passed bill in the Texas state legislature was allowing “Texas fracking rape.” “Fracking victims I have worked with describe it as a rape,” Wilson wrote in a blog post protesting […]
Spill clean up a messy business
Marine oil spills can be extremely difficult to deal with. In the sea of Cardiff, Wales engineers from a European research project are testing a new prototype that cleans oil spills quickly, efficiently and more cheaply than existing methods. “What we’ve developed is a net which can float on the surface of the water, without […]
Is there a link between fracking and earthquakes?
Over the last few years, Oklahoma has experienced an insane uptick in earthquakes. The count went from just a couple per year back in the mid-2000s to over a thousand in 2010. Those numbers grew alongside a boom in the state’s natural gas drilling industry. There is now a heap of peer-reviewed research finding that […]
Lingering impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The dispersant most often used during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill might cause damage to cells in human lungs and in the gills of fish and crabs, according to a study published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, published in the PLOS One online […]
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