Oil and Gas Watch

Brendan Gibbons

Even with Gulf drilling down, Trump Administration weighs expanding drilling to new coasts

The number of oil and gas drilling rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico today is about half of what it was a year ago, with 10 rigs working on June 27, compared to 19 a year earlier. In the face of this slump, the oil and gas industry is lobbying the Trump Administration to expand drilling rights into new coastal areas where it has been banned for years. These include the Atlantic Coast from the Carolinas to Florida, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, off Florida and Alabama.

Keene Kelderman

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.

Brendan Gibbons

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.

Brendan Gibbons

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.