Crowdsourcing Digital PA Oil & Gas Data FracTracker Alliance worked with Public Herald this spring to update and map oil and gas complaints filed by citizens to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) as of March 2015. The result is the largest release of oil and gas records on water contamination due to fracking in […]
November 13-15, 2015 Wyndham Pittsburgh University Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Coordinated by FracTracker Alliance and ForestEthics Couldn’t make it? Watch Friday’s Presentations Or check out the conversation on Twitter: #oiltrain15 About the Event Over the past few years, oil train traffic across the continent has increased rapidly with more than 500,000 rail cars moving oil in 2014 alone, […]
By Bill Hughes, WV Community Liaison As oil and gas drilling increases in West Virginia, the resulting waste stream must also be managed. House Bill 107 required the Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to investigate the risks associated with landfill disposal of solid drilling waste. On July 1, 2015, a massive […]
By Emily Watson, FracTracker Summer Intern Sea otters, an endangered keystone species, are at risk due to offshore oil and gas drilling spills. Along the west coast of the U.S., this marine mammal’s habitat is commonly near offshore drilling sites, specifically in California and Alaska. Sea Otters – a Keystone Species Sea otter numbers used […]
Reviewing a Pennsylvania TENORM Study By Juliana Henao, Communications Intern Technologically-enhanced, naturally-occurring radioactive materials, also known as TENORM, are produced when radionuclides deep in the earth are brought to the surface by human activity such as oil and gas drilling. The radioactive materials, which include uranium (U), thorium (th), potassium-40 (K-40) and their decay products, […]
By Juliana Henao, Communications Intern Media outlets have been very focused recently on reporting oil train derailments and explosions. Additionally, the Keystone XL pipeline has hastened political debates and arguments for years by both political parties since its initial proposal in 2008 – and the May 19th pipeline oil spill in California isn’t helping matters. In the […]
By Randy Sargent, Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab and Samantha Malone, FracTracker Alliance In the past two years, crude oil trains have exploded 10 times, killing 47 people. It could have been much worse. Eight of the ten trains exploded in rural areas. The train that flattened half the business district of the small […]
Lifting the Veil on Oil & Gas Company Spills & Violations NRDC Issue Paper • April 2015 Today Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report in conjunction with work by those of us at FracTracker Alliance. We launched this investigation to determine what information about oil and gas company violations is publicly available on the Internet, how accessible […]
By Bill Hughes, WV Community Liaison, FracTracker Alliance West Virginia has generously allowed the shale gas industry to occupy parts of our private land (for profit), namely the Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area (LWWMA). This area is known for 13,500 acres of slopes, trails and forests, providing its inhabitants with great opportunities to hunt, fish, […]
By Samantha Malone, MPH, CPH – Manager of Education, Communications, & Partnerships The rate of violations by fracking companies has been of significant interest to many groups including our own. But why? What can violations data tell us about oil and gas safety that a news article about a particular incident cannot? When companies do not […]
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