Marcellus Shale

Environmental activists are calling on Colorado officials to require oil and gas companies to chemically tag the fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, an increasingly controversial natural gas drilling process. Many suspect that “fracking” may be contaminating ground water and chemical tags would make it possible for regulators to identify the source of any contamination. The idea is a hot topic among those favoring increased federal oversight of the process, but industry officials won’t even discuss the idea, and state regulators say it’s barely on their radar screens.

Even as the Garfield County commissioners today take up debate on a resolution regarding the FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, an environmental researcher in New York released a damning report on the natural gas industry in that state.

Former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a six-time Republican congressman representing Colorado’s Western Slope, would like to turn the state’s prime mountain playgrounds into something more closely resembling the industrialized environs of Pennsylvania.
At least that’s our interpretation of a Grand Junction Daily Sentinel story in which McInnis praises the “drill, baby, drill” policies of Democratic Pennsylvania [...]

The new documentary “Split Estate” is getting all the publicity on Colorado’s Western Slope lately, but a filmmaker from Milanville, Pa., shot a raw, 16-minute documentary called “Life in the Red Zone,” about natural gas contamination in Fort Lupton, that definitely bears watching as well.
Josh Fox, apparently concerned about the looming natural gas boom in [...]

Hydraulic fracturing – the subject of so much controversy on Colorado’s Western Slope lately – will be allowed to resume in Susquehanna County, Pa., after state environmental officials said they were satisfied with prevention plans submitted by a Texas company that reported three chemical spills related to the process last month.
Held up by proponents of [...]

ProPublica Monday reported environmental officials were scrambling to clean up 8,000 gallons of a “potential carcinogen” manufactured by Halliburton and used in a natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing that spilled into a creek near Dimock, Pa.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has been a source of ongoing debate in Colorado, where Garfield County residents say [...]

Any Coloradan who’s spent a significant amount of time living or working back east knows how difficult it is to duplicate the true wilderness experiences one finds in the wide-open spaces of the Rocky Mountain West.
There are places, like along the Appalachian Trail, where a few precious hours of natural solace can be snatched from [...]