Russia is attempting to claim more of the Arctic seabed, an area rich in oil, gas and minerals. It’s also expanding shipping and reopening Arctic bases. Here are two things the U.S. can do about it.
California was thought to be an exception, a place where oil field operations and tectonic faults apparently coexisted without much problem. Not any more.
Noise, pollution and other stressors from trucks and drilling can harm residents’ health. In Colorado, an upcoming vote on new setback rules is expected to widen the buffer zone.
Milehightraveler/iistock via Getty
The pandemic recession has reduced US energy demand, roiling budgets in states that are major fossil fuel producers. But politics and culture can impede efforts to look beyond oil, gas and coal.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Guyana’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, Sept. 18. Pompeo is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the tiny South American country.
AFP via Getty Images
Tiny Guyana hoped to see unprecedented wealth this year as ExxonMobil’s offshore wells began pumping out crude. Instead, it got a pandemic and political strife. Other oil states are struggling, too.
An oil tanker passes fishermen as it moves through a channel in Port Aransas, Texas, in May 2020.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Irving Oil is transporting Canadian crude oil by tanker through the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico to its Saint John refinery in an effort to offset any impact COVID-19 might have on its supply.
Caribou from the Porcupine Caribou Herd migrate onto the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska.
USFWS via AP
The Trump administration is opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing – a step that’s as much about politics as it is about energy.
New research found a significantly higher risk of preterm births near gas flaring in Texas, particularly among Latinas.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Jill Johnston, University of Southern California and Lara Cushing, University of California, Los Angeles
A study shows that low-income communities and communities of color are bearing the brunt of the energy industry’s pollution in the region. The risks also extend to the unborn.
Flaring gas at an oil production site outside Williston, North Dakota.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Flaring, or burning, waste gas from energy production has sharply increased over the past decade. It wastes usable fuel, pollutes the air, and helps drive climate change.
A fisher presents his meagre catch from a polluted creek in Ogoniland, Nigeria.
EPA/MARTEN VAN DIJL
Chronic pollution has robbed many young Nigerians of a stable future in the place where they grew up.
Protesters rally to have Colorado’s then-incoming governor put an up-to-nine-month moratorium on oil and gas development.
Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Millions of dollars are spent every election by corporations that want to influence state regulations and policies, and that’s likely to continue in the upcoming election.
A pump jack in the town of Signal Hill, California, which sits within the Long Beach Oil Field near the Port of Long Beach.
Frederick J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
A new study finds an association between living near active oil and gas wells in California and low birth-weight infants, adding to findings elsewhere on health risks from oil and gas production.
Wind turbines in the first rays of sunlight at the Saddleback Ridge Wind Project in Carthage, Maine, March 20, 2019.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty