An Invisible Poison: Oil & Gas Air Emissions

Gas from the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead is burned by the drillship Discoverer Enterprise May 16, in a process known as flaring. Gas and oil from the wellhead are being brought to the surface via a tube that was placed inside the damaged pipe. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley) U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Photo by Patrick Kelley Date: 05.16.2010 Location: At Sea Related Photos: dvidshub.net/r/hel5qk

‘Upset’ emissions: Flares in the air, worry on the ground by Kristen Lombardi & Andrea Fuller for Public Integrity  BATON ROUGE, La. — Shirley Bowman noticed the smell after 8 a.m. on June 14, 2012, her 61st birthday. [...]

EcoWatch Interviews Public Herald About Fracking & Triple Divide

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With high-profile activists like Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon taking a stand against fracking, the controversial drilling practice has been pulled from the periphery and placed in the public's main line-of-sight at a scale sparking movement from Hollywood. Promised Land, a film starring Matt Damon as a salesman for a natural gas company, hits theaters tonight, lending cinematic drama to the issue of fracking. While the large-scale exposure is valuable, Melissa Troutman, co-creator of another film on fracking, is careful to iterate an important fact, "Promised Land is a story, but this [Triple Divide] is a true story." Triple Divide, a documentary by Joshua Pribanic and Melissa Troutman of Public Herald, carefully investigates the effects of fracking in the Marcellus Shale Region of Pennsylvania from the ground up, focusing its lens on the true accounts of neighbors who have lost their water well to contamination from drilling, and farmers, like the ones in Promised Land, who have lost their land to pollution from a nearby well pad. In their first live interview about the film, journalists Joshua and Melissa discussed Triple Divide and the impact of fracking with Stefanie Spear, Founder and Editor of EcoWatch, a news service designed to promote and build a community of grassroots environmental activism. You can watch the full interview above or at EcoWatch.

Recent Study Says Shale Brines Are Migrating to Drinking Water

Carol French of Bradford County, Pa., told Public Herald in a June 2012 interview how she believes Marcellus and fracking fluids have migrated from deep underground to contaminate her drinking water. photo: J.B.Pribanic

New Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water by Abrahm Lustgarten for ProPublica New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking [...]

Locals Fight Against Act 13, Pennsylvania’s New Fracking Law

A natural gas well pad in Bradford County, Pa., employing the controversial method hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Local legislator's want to decide where these wells are located in their districts, but Act 13 would strip them of that authority and pass it on to the state. photo: J.B.Pribanic

Local leaders sue for right to control location of gas wells Natural gas contributions, lobbying dollars flow by Alice Su for iWatch News When Pennsylvania passed a state law that stripped local authority over where potentially hazardous natural [...]

Keystone XL Pipeline Benefits Questioned by Cornell University Study

Keystone XL demonstration, White House,8-23-2011. photo: Josh Lopez (Wikimedia Commons)

What Is the Keystone XL Pipeline — and Why Is It So Controversial? by Lois Beckett for ProPublica By the end of this year, the State Department will decide whether to give a Canadian company permission to construct a 1,700-mile, [...]