A Binghamton-area Assemblywoman penned a letter to the state’s top environmental regulator Wednesday, urging him to call a meeting of the state’s High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel — a once-touted committee of interested parties that hasn’t met in nearly a year.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York's health commissioner and "qualified outside experts" will review the health impacts of shale gas drilling before a moratorium on the "fracking" extraction process is lifted, Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens said Thursday.
The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, the International Energy Agency said Monday.
In February 1932, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt was plotting a run for the White House. And in northeast Pennsylvania, the Morris Run Coal Co. had just finished drilling a 5,385-foot-deep gas well on a farm owned by Mr. W.J. Butters.
Eighty years and four months later, the Butters well was tied to another incident — even though it had been inactive for generations. It played a key role in a methane gas leak that led to a 30-foot geyser of gas and water spraying out of the ground for more than a week.
Methane is an odorless, colorless gas that exists naturally below the surface. It isn't poisonous, but it's dangerous. When enough methane gathers in an enclosed space — a basement or a water well, for instance — it can trigger an explosion.
