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Whenever President Obama isn’t talking about cracking down on subsidies for Big Oil, he’s usually hyping all the work his own Administration has done to support domestic oil production. He has a point—U.S. oil production has gone up under Obama. Unlike his predecessor, Obama doesn’t look much like an oil man, but he’s hardly gone [...]
Why was President Obama speaking at the small town of Cushing, Oklahoma this morning? Whether or not you know the answer to that questions probably predicts where you stand on energy policy. Cushing is the Pipelines Crossroads of the World—they even have a monument. The town is the central hub for American oil pipelines, feeding [...]
I’m a pretty even-tempered writer by nature. I like to withhold judgement for as long as possible. Even though I’m an environment writer, that attitude sometimes gets me in trouble with environmentalists who want me to come down harder on climate skeptics or the fossil-fuel industry. But I know just how difficult it is to separate [...]
Since virtually the entire field of Republican presidential candidates has decided to abandon science — with the exception of Jon Huntsman, whose negligible support has to be measured with an electron microscope — I could easily spend the next 15 months shooting down every false statement they make about climate change, energy policy or evolution. [...]
On April 24, 2010, I wrote this about the aftermath of the explosion that took down the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico: The good news is that this spill looks as though it will be largely contained. The Coast Guard reported Friday morning, April 23, that a remote-controlled camera found that [...]
For all the fear about the potential for deep underground water contamination due to the hydraulic fracturing process used in shale gas extraction, there’s always been a much more present danger: the risk of something going wrong at the surface. From simple spills to industrial accidents to the ongoing problem of wastewater disposal, the rapid [...]
Last March, President Barack Obama gave a speech on energy security at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. In it, Obama offered what might be called a “grand compromise” on energy—in exchange for expanded offshore drilling, including in previously untouched areas like north Alaska and the Atlantic, he called for support of alternative power and [...]
In what was possibly the most anticipated intersection between two shafts in U.S. history, the government announced late Thursday that BP’s relief well had finally connected with the company’s original blown well. That will allow BP to go ahead and place a final cement seal on the original well—finally, truly, really killing it. “The two [...]
