"GLASGOW, Mont. — Drug crimes in eastern Montana have more than doubled. Assaults in Dickinson, N.D., have increased fivefold in just two years. And the once-sleepy town of Plentywood, Mont., has seen three assaults with weapons in the past few months — a prospect previously unheard of in the tiny community tucked against the Canada border.
"A former BP engineer who assisted in attempts to stop the flow of oil from the company's Macondo well after the Deepwater Horizon explosion was arrested [Tuesday] on charges of intentionally destroying evidence concerning the amount of oil released from the well. Kurt Mix, who resigned from BP PLC in January, was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans and unsealed [Tuesday]."
"COATZINTLA, Mexico — For seven decades, Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly and a mainstay of the government’s revenue, regulated itself — which is a polite way of saying it could do pretty much as it pleased."
"Two years after a blowout on BP’s Macondo well killed 11 men and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history, oil companies are again plying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico."
"Sea level rise from global warming is well on the way to doubling the risk of coastal floods 4 feet or more over high tide by 2030 at locations nationwide. In the lower 48 states, nearly 300 energy facilities stand on land below that level, including natural gas infrastructure, electric power plants, and oil and gas refineries. Many more facilities are at risk at higher levels, where flooding will become progressively more likely with time as the sea continues to rise. These results come from a Climate Central combined analysis of datasets from NOAA, USGS and FEMA."
"BOARDMAN, Ore. -- A new link in the world's future energy supply could soon be built here on the Columbia River, and it would have nothing to do with the vast acres of wind turbines or the mammoth hydroelectric dams that give this region's power sources one of the cleanest carbon footprints in the nation."
"The company planning the disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline has proposed a new route through Nebraska that avoids the state's environmentally sensitive Sandhills region."
"WASHINGTON -- Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."
After complaints from BP, the US government agreed to give the company evidence of the basis for its calculation of the flow rate from the stricken Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The government will hand over to BP some 100 documents about the size of the 2010 oil spill that have not yet been made public.
If you have a fracking story in your beat, getting information about what's in the controversial fracking fluids may be like pulling teeth. But there are a few resources that can help, such as the "FracFocus" chemical disclosure registry.
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