Oil and Gas Watch News
Tom Pelton
/
January 16, 2025

Thousands of permits to drill on federal lands are not being used. So why 'expedite' more?

After campaigning on “Drill, Baby, Drill!” one of the first things that President-elect Trump and Republicans are expected to do when they take office next week is to accelerate the approval of permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land. But more drilling permits don’t appear to be needed. That’s because there are more than 6,000 approved permits for oil and gas companies to drill on federal lands that are available but sitting idle and not being used. Millions of acres of federal lands leased to oil and gas companies for drilling are also not being used.

News Briefs

January 16, 2025
Oil & gas lobby targets EVs, calls to boost exports in ‘road map’ for Trump Administration

The largest oil & gas industry group in the U.S. is calling for the end of federal policies to promote electric vehicles and pause the approval of liquified natural gas export terminals.

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January 16, 2025
Natural gas exports begin at Louisiana terminal, eighth in U.S. so far

Plaquemines LNG in Louisiana shipped its first cargo on Dec. 26, according to a company announcement.

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January 16, 2025
Company seeks permits for six carbon injection wells off Louisiana coast

A company plans to drill six wells to store carbon dioxide (CO2) a few miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

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In Depth Reports

Plastic's Toxic River

The Environmental Integrity Project examined the records of 70 U.S. facilities that make plastics or the main chemical ingredients in plastics and found they discharged almost 12 million pounds in 2023 of total nitrogen and phosphorus.

The Long Shadow of Oil Refinery Waste

The use of an oil refinery waste product, petroleum coke, as an ingredient in metals and other products releases large amounts of health-damaging air pollutants, often in disadvantaged communities.

Flaws in EPA’s Monitoring and Verification of Carbon Capture Projects

The Environmental Integrity Project examined one central component of carbon capture and sequestration regulation in the U.S.: monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) plans required by the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

News Articles

Alexandra Shaykevich
/
January 9, 2025

Manufacturers of ammonia from natural gas plan a boom in the U.S. But will it bust under Trump?

The United States is on the cusp of quadrupling its ammonia production capacity in the next five years—a move that could come with serious risks to human health and the environment. Ammonia, a chemical that is usually manufactured from natural gas, is used for synthetic fertilizers and explosives. Proponents now want to use it as a shipping fuel and to make hydrogen for clean energy. As of December 2024, 38 proposed ammonia projects across the U.S. could increase annual ammonia production capacity by over 60 million metric tons per year by 2030. That would result in a near quadrupling of the amount of ammonia production capacity in the U.S. today, from 21 million metric tons to 81 million metric tons.

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Brendan Gibbons
/
January 2, 2025

The top Oil & Gas Watch News stories of 2024, according to readers

Oil & Gas Watch News has covered a huge variety of stories over the past year, with stories taking us from Puerto Rico to North Carolina and detailing topics as diverse as carbon capture and storage, fertilizer made from natural gas, and the EPA’s efforts to crack down on climate-polluting laughing gas. However, of all the topics covered in our 44 articles published this year, a few rose to the top as fan favorites – according to you, our readers. Here we have ranked the stories that drew the most readers to the site.

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Tom Pelton
/
December 19, 2024

Why climate-skeptical Republicans may protect billions in taxpayer funding for a climate program

Funded by billions of dollars in new taxpayer subsidies approved by the Biden Administration, more than 160 projects have been proposed across the U.S. to capture carbon dioxide pollution from industry and bury it underground as a strategy to address climate change. But Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, is returning to the White House, and climate-skeptical Republicans are taking control of Congress. The politics within the Republican Party and the economic interests of the oil and gas industry make Congress unlikely to eliminate subsidies for carbon capture. More than 90 percent of taxpayer-supported carbon capture projects in recent years have been run by fossil fuel companies.

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Brendan Gibbons
/
December 5, 2024

The huge new oil project in Alaska that is escaping national attention

Last year, environmentalists criticized the Biden Administration for approving a large oil drilling project on public land in the Alaskan Arctic called the Willow project. However, a similar petroleum project has drawn little attention. About 30 miles east of Willow, Australian energy company Santos, Spanish company Repsol, and ASRC Energy, a subsidiary of the Alaska Native-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), has received approvals and is currently building the first phase of the Pikka Project, an effort to produce hundreds of millions of barrels of oil over the next three decades. The project is located entirely on land owned by the State of Alaska and the ASRC.

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