Common Resources

Fracking on Federal Lands: Stewards, not Regulators

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management proposed new rules for oil and gas fracking on federal lands. We have not yet digested the package of rules, so we don’t have anything to say about their content yet. But some industry critics immediately attacked the proposal, arguing not that it was too strict, but that [...]

US Shale Gas Development in Review

The United States has seen rapid recent development of shale gas. What are the factors behind the notable growth in the past decade? And what does it mean for shale gas development elsewhere in the world? Alan Krupnick and I examine the history of the US shale gas boom in a new RFF discussion paper. [...]

Polar Interpretations of a Study of Shale Gas Development and Surface Water

On Monday, my colleagues, Sheila Olmstead, Jhih-Shyang Shih, Ziyan Chu, Alan Krupnick and I published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences testing for evidence of impacts to surface water quality from shale gas development across four different pathways.  We used more than a decade of data from over 20,000 surface [...]

Shale Gas Priorities? I’d Like to Use a Lifeline.

Yesterday, we released a survey of 215 shale gas development experts that found a surprising amount of agreement between experts from academia, industry, government, and environmental NGOs on what potential environmental risks due to hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are of most pressing need for attention.  Why, though, is a survey of experts a useful [...]

The Jefferson Memorial, from Space

A set of NASA images from the Suomi polar-orbiting satellite has been getting some traffic today, driven by an article by Radiolab co-host Robert Krulwich. It shows bright lights from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota, looking like a metropolis where maps show little settlement. The images are very cool, especially for energy/infrastructure nerds. There’s obvious points to [...]

Matt Damon, Energy Cassandra

In 2005′s critically acclaimed Syriana, Matt Damon plays Bryan Woodman, an energy analyst who becomes a policy adviser to a fictional Gulf emirate. In a classic scene, Woodman challenges his royal employers by speaking frankly about the country’s economy and warning that outsiders (particularly Americans) will try to exploit the emirate while keeping it in poverty.   [...]

Promised Land

Unlike the documentary Gasland, the Matt Damon/Jon Krasinski “fracking movie” Promised Land is a Hollywood drama, with a plot twist that’s pretty shocking and not meant to be believable. So, be charitable when it comes to holding it to the truth. The movie is really about the trade-offs of living in a rural area vs. a [...]

Can Fracking Help Achieve Climate Stabilization and Long-term Energy Independence?

In some recent posts, Joel Darmstader and I discussed aspects of North American energy independence, with a focus on oil independence. In the last post in the series, Joel looked at environmental consequences of the rapidly changing continental energy picture. I think that issue is worth a second look. The development of natural resources often [...]

Does a Natural Gas Bridge Go Anywhere?

(a few very minor edits have been made since this post was written. -ed). Michael Levi has a great and provocative new paper on natural gas as a bridge fuel – that is, shifting from coal to gas generation now, with a future shift to zero-carbon renewables. At the risk of oversimplification, the main finding is [...]

States Push EPA to Regulate Methane from Oil & Gas Operations

New York and six other eastern states announced this week that they intend to sue the EPA, seeking to force the agency to regulate methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations. Specifically, they claim EPA is required by the Clean Air Act to issue new source performance standards (NSPS) for methane emissions from wells, [...]