Columbus, OH -- Over the weekend, Sierra Club discovered that Energy Transfer’s fracked gas pipeline, Rover, has spilled six times in a two-week period, has had six stormwater violations, and violated the Clean Air Act all before the pipeline even goes into operation.
Washington, DC -- Today, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of the Interior to review the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Oil and Gas leasing program. According to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, the process will take two years. Trump will also order a review of marine monuments and existing offshore drilling regulations including the blowout preventer rule, put into place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
TALLAHASSEE, FLA—A bill under consideration in the state Legislature would let Florida Power and Light and other utilities make customers pay for exploratory gas fracking in other states and also make customers give the utilities a guaranteed profit for that exploration.
A Senate panel on Tuesday approved SB 1238, which would undo a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that said companies are overstepping their authority in passing along these costs to ratepayers.
Columbus, OH -- Yesterday, it was revealed that Energy Transfer’s Rover pipeline has had two major spills of drilling fluids into Ohio’s wetlands in just the past week. Construction began on the project on in mid-March 2017. On April 14th, 50,000 gallons of drilling fluids were spilled into a wetland in Richland County, Mifflin Township.
Deadhorse, Alaska -- A British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas well on Alaska’s Northern Slope that blew out on Friday continues to spill crude oil and gas uncontrollably. No one was injured when the well blew out.
This disaster comes on the heels of two spills in Alaska’s Cook inlet and less than a week before the seven year anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
Yesterday, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), in a letter to a federal regulator, announced its intention to “vacate and remand” their approval of the certification for the proposed fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Late yesterday, the Sierra Club filed objections to the United States Forest Service's proposal to facilitate the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) by weakening crucial provisions of the forest plan for the Monongahela and George Washington National Forests in West Virginia and Virginia.
The plan to build a new fracked gas plant at the Asheville coal plant site at Lake Julian has been postponed by at least four years, according to a Duke Energy Progress filing today with state regulators.