News Articles
Company’s plans for 690-mile natural gas pipeline would affect thousands of landowners in Texas, Louisiana
With plans for the pipeline to begin operating in 2028, Houston-based Moss Lake Partners is already surveying a 300-foot-wide corridor along the pipeline’s route from west of Odessa, Texas, in the oil-and gas-producing region of the Permian Basin, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. The current route would cross 3,473 tracts of land, according to company filings. The DeLa Express is the latest in a wave of new pipelines transporting gas out of West Texas. The pipeline is one of 35 pending pipeline projects nationwide that are intended to supply gas to liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals for export.
As LNG industry booms, salt caverns converted into massive underground gas storage facilities
Companies are proposing to build or expand three large underground natural gas storage facilities in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast to supply a rapidly-growing LNG industry. The increased storage space is also needed, developers argue, for gas generators being used to back up the expanded use of wind and solar power. One side effect of storing gas underground in salt caverns is the leakage of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. These storage projects are also occasionally the sites of explosions and other accidents.
New air pollution monitoring rules for refineries are driving down benzene levels at plant fencelines
Recent EPA data show a marked improvement in levels of benzene, a potent carcinogen, measured at the fencelines of U.S. oil refineries, suggesting that less of the dangerous pollutant is escaping into neighboring communities. By the end of 2023, only six out of 109 U.S. refineries exceeded the EPA's action level for benzene, compared to 12 at the end of 2020. New rules imposed by EPA in 2015 that require refineries to monitor these emissions and take action against high levels of the pollutant appear to be working.
Despite incentives for carbon capture, U.S. is still mining CO₂ to produce more oil
Even as the Biden Administration is providing billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to encourage industry to capture carbon dioxide and bury it underground to help protect the climate, some companies are working in the opposite direction. In places like southwestern Colorado and Jackson, Mississippi, companies are pulling huge volumes of virgin CO₂ out of the ground to use it to extract more oil, which is then burned to contribute more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Pipeline supplying new PA plastics plant charged with criminal cover up of spills
Pennsylvania's Attorney General charged Shell Pipeline with 13 criminal charges for violating Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law during construction of the 45-mile Falcon Pipeline in western Pennsylvania. The pipeline transports natural gas liquid in the form of ethane from drilling sites in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to the Shell Polymers Monaca petrochemical plant, where it is processed into plastic. An investigation revealed that Shell allegedly failed to notify state officials about multiple problems, including when drilling mud or fluid was lost underground and came to the surface where it could contaminate waterbodies.
In Illinois, a massive taxpayer-funded carbon capture project fails to capture about 90 percent of plant’s emissions
The project, run by ethanol producer Archer Daniels Midland and partners, received $281 million in taxpayer dollars via Department of Energy grants. It has stored more than 2.8 million metric tons of CO2 since 2011. However, EPA records show that represents a capture rate of only about 10-12 percent of the plant’s emissions each year at most, allowing the rest of the carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere. This small percentage raises questions about whether industrial-scale carbon capture technology can be a meaningful solution to global warming.
With 34 petrochemical ‘plastics recycling’ plants proposed across U.S., a small PA town fights back -- and wins
Plans to build what would have been the largest petrochemical plant in the U.S. dedicated to breaking down plastic waste into chemicals were cancelled today. The decision by the Encina company came after a town council in Pennsylvania voted unanimously to “strenuously and unequivocally” oppose the company's proposed plant on the banks of the Susquehanna River. The victory by the local community in Northumberland Borough is the latest example of rising opposition to a wave of 34 petrochemical plants proposed across the U.S. that wrap themselves in misleading language about “recycling” plastics.
Opposition mounts to aging oil & gas pipeline threatening Great Lakes drinking water
The Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline, which carries oil beneath Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, is notorious for a 2010 accident that was one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history. More than 20,000 barrels of heavy crude oil spilled into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. This messy history weighs heavily on the future of the old pipeline, which is facing lawsuits from the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Michigan Attorney General's office.
A new EPA rule is meant to prevent chemical disasters, but safety advocates say loopholes remain
The U.S. experiences a chemical disaster on average once every two days, including at least 45 so far in 2024, according to the nonprofit Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. However, a new safety rule the Biden administration recently released is meant to avoid such catastrophes. Advocates also say EPA should have done more, such as required air monitoring at the fence lines of major facilities and adding ammonium nitrate, an explosive material used in fertilizer, to the hazardous chemical list.
Thousands of abandoned wells in Louisiana threaten to leak carbon dioxide from storage projects
Louisiana is one of the hotspots in the U.S. for sequestration projects that trap carbon dioxide (CO2) underground to protect the climate. Companies are planning 58 storage wells at 24 sites across the state. However, experts say a century of oil and gas drilling has left thousands of pathways for CO2 to squeeze its way back out into the atmosphere, potentially eroding any climate benefits and creating a safety threat for nearby residents in the event of a massive rupture or leak. Two recent reports examine the threat from the more than 186,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Louisiana.
Texas plastics factory shows how companies take public subsidies while breaking pollution laws
The Formosa Point Comfort plastics manufacturing plant on the Texas Gulf Coast, which makes plastics and other chemicals out of oil and gas, received nearly $69 million in school district tax breaks over a decade. But despite the public support, the plant has routinely violated water and air pollution control laws – without ever losing its subsidies, as a consequence. In a new report, the Environmental Integrity Project examined 50 plastics plants built or expanded in the U.S. since 2012 and found that 64 percent of them received taxpayer subsidies worth a total of almost $9 billion over a decade.
EPA’s new rule will slash planet-warming methane emissions from oil and gas industry, but it could be stronger
According to the EPA, the final rule will avoid an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038. That’s nearly 80 percent less than projected methane emissions without the rule. But the EPA could have been stronger in requiring oil and gas flares to destroy 98 percent of emissions, rather than the 95 percent destruction rate included in the final rule. It also also failed to require relatively low-cost monitoring needed to make sure that flares are burning cleanly and efficiently.
World’s largest ammonia complex would make fertilizer from natural gas in West Virginia coalfields
The world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer plant, which would make ammonia out of natural gas, could be headed for a former coal mining site in rural West Virginia. TransGas Systems, a New York-based company, is seeking an air quality permit for a facility in Mingo County with six ammonia manufacturing units capable of producing up to 6,000 metric tons per day – a total of more than 13 million metric tons per year. The proposed plant is part of a wave of new and expanding fertilizer factories being built across the country.
New York is suing Pepsi over oil- and gas-based plastic pollution
When staff from the environmental protection bureau of the New York Attorney General’s office decided to use their authority to address oil- and gas-based-based plastic waste on the Buffalo River, they never intended to go after Pepsi, specifically. But after scientists with the office inventoried piles of trash that volunteers had pulled from the river in western New York, they found that Pepsi’s products made up 17 percent of the plastic waste they found. The lawsuit is the first in the U.S. involving a state suing a company over plastic pollution.
As Mountain Valley Pipeline races to completion, construction leaves muddy mess in Virginia waterways
As construction crews rush to complete the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia, advocates are calling on state and federal authorities to stop work on the project, citing evidence that the company has again caused erosion that polluted springs and waterways with sediment. One recent example includes a spring in Giles County, west of Roanoke, that began flowing with muddy water after the company's construction work nearby.
