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Ohio has shut down the natural gas drilling wastewater disposal well that triggers earthquakes. Politicians are finally reacting to drinking water contamination, too. We need new disposal methods for the salty, toxic waste and ways to hold oil companies accountable. Here are 10 great ways to do both!
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The reviled “jobless recovery” of the U.S. economy won’t improve much in 2012, say the usual forecasters. But oil company executives and market speculators can break out the champagne now as the price of crude oil starts the year with a huge jump. It’s not about Iranian threats or rising demand, it’s about speculative profits.
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Exxon Mobil, which is making big bets worldwide on hydraulic fracturing for deeply buried natural gas, is also making big bets on its sincere, earnest advertising about clean, safe natural gas. The ads turn me into a…
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Whenever regulators try to clean up our air or water, industry issues its standard “job killer” press release. Let your children keep their asthma and we won’t shut down our (oil, gas, coal) (refinery, drilling…
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Exxon is still fumbling to deal with a 42,000-gallon oil pipeline spill on the Yellowstone River west of Billings, Montana. Its initial response was pathetic–it was slow to turn off the gushing pipeline, had no…
The surge in energy company drilling for deep-rock natural gas has generated a matching surge in complaints of water contamination, including faucets pouring out so much methane gas that you can light it (video) with…
The price of gasoline is up a dollar in the last year to $3.83 a gallon nationally. Good time to see a strange, funny, disturbing documentary called “Gashole” about how this happens. Who knew that Congressional hearings featuring oil company CEOS could be simultaneously hilarious and horrifiying? Or that “Reefer Madness” provides a clue to how oil companies distract us from the real issues?
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Oil companies are making a fortune off of drivers with oil at $109 a barrel (which comes to $2.60 a gallon at 42 gallons per barrel). But they’re getting rich a second time refining the oil into gasoline.
An Ecuadorean judge’s ruling Monday that Chevron owes $8.8 billion for oil-drilling damage and pollution in the Amazon is far less than asked. But it’s far more than Chevron intends to pay–which is zero, except…
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The wee island nation of Fiji managed Wednesday to back down a California-owned company and extract a fee of 8 US cents per liter on Fiji Water. The state of California can’t even manage to back down Big Oil and charge a few cents a gallon on oil pumped out of its public lands. Jerry Brown, are you listening?
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The charitable interpretation of Kenneth Feinberg’s keynote speech Wednesday for the Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform is that the BP compensations fund administrator is deaf to the implications. When Feinberg opens his mouth, he’ll be validating a powerful and viciously anti-consumer organization whose parent, the Chamber, is deeply involved in pro-corporate politics.
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Chevron seemed to act fast–too fast–to shoot down a spoof Monday of the oil company’s “We Agree” faux-caring ad campaign. The spoof was by the Yes Men group, whose “Chamber of Commerce” news conference last…
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Given the fury directed at BP in Congressional hearings on the Gulf oil spill, you’d think the time was ripe to cut the oil industry’s ridiculous subsidies–amounting to at least $40 billion per decade, according…
