How This U.S. Rail Safety Measure Has Been Delayed for 44 Years … And Counting
On August 20, 1969, two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Conn. Four people were killed and 43 were injured. The crash led the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to recommend that railroads implement new safety technology called positive train control — a system for monitoring and controlling train movements to increase safety. The […]
TransCanada Charitable Fund Launches Keystone XL "Good Neighbor" Charm Offensive
TransCanada has taken a page out of former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s playbook and deployed a public relations “charm offensive” in Texas, home of the southern leg of its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline now known as the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project. In the 1930s and 1940s, Roosevelt utilized a “good neighbor policy“ — conceptualized today […]
Wealthy Corporate CEOs Behind Fake Anti-Fracking Ads
The online version of the Post Independent, the local daily newspaper in heavily-drilled Garfield County, Colorado, is prominently displaying black-and-white banner ads that read, “Blowing the Lid off Fracking Colorado.” Readers are led to believe the ads are anti-fracking, but click on them and you’re taken to a pro-fracking website, JobCreatorsNetwork.com, that boasts about all […]
Mayflower: Deadly Tornado Sweeps Through Arkansas Town That Endured ExxonMobil Tar Sands Pipeline Spill in 2013
On March 29, 2013, ExxonMobil‘s Pegasus tar sands pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) pouring down the town’s streets. Now, just over a year after the massive spill, devastation has come to Mayflower and neighboring towns again, this time in the form of a lethal tornado. On […]
Oil Industry Cherry-Picks Drilling Data to Mislead Public on Federal Lease Programs
The oil industry and its well-compensated apologists in Congress like to complain that the Obama administration is stalling oil production on public lands. The problem with that argument: it’s demonstrably false. While plenty of environmental advocates may wish that President Obama was actively working to keep the fossil fuel reserves underground, the data tells a much […]
Untangling Colorado's Flood of Anti-Fracking Ballot Initiatives
Colorado voters who try to figure out all the proposed statewide ballot initiatives to regulate drilling and fracking are in for a real challenge. So far, 11 ballot initiatives have been proposed on the subject for the November vote, with many of them extremely similar to each other. It’s tempting to think the oil […]
Favorable Court Ruling Lets Americans Breathe Easier
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scored a huge court victory recently, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that the agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) is within the EPA’s realm of enforcement. The rule, which was put in place in 2012 and would take effect later this year, […]
New York Times Joins the Bumbling Keystone XL Cops
This is a guest post by Brad Johnson, cross-posted with permission from Hill Heat. In a New York Times Earth Day story, the usually excellent Coral Davenport grossly misrepresents the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline’s true impact on global warming, and questions the wisdom of pipeline opponents like the activists now encamped on the National Mall. […]
No Community is Prepared for Major Oil-By-Rail Accident, Senate Hearing Told
Just as you aren’t supposed to try to put out an oil fire in your kitchen with water, you aren’t supposed to try to put out a crude oil fire with water either. But in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that is all firefighters had for the first two days of battling the catastrophic oil-by-rail fire last July. The […]
Alberta Ramps Up “Responsible Energy Development” Sales Pitch in Wake of New Keystone XL Delay
Days after another delay by the Obama administration on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, members of the Alberta government are hitting the U.S. circuit to promote the oilsands and boost their “green” credentials. Three government officials are heading to key regions in the U.S. to push for continued market access and advertise what Albertan energy minister Diana […]