University of Colorado Public Health professor Lisa McKenzie’s latest attempt to connect oil and natural gas development to health risks – this time involving precursors to cardiovascular disease – produces the same results as her team’s previous research: a failure to actually link fracking to these issues despite what media reported.

The key finding from this latest McKenzie et al. study is a “possible connection” that volunteer participants who lived near higher “intensity” oil and gas operations had increased levels of pre-indicators of cardiovascular disease. They also conclude that more “robust” research is needed – which appears to be Prof. McKenzie’s M.O. (which we will address in a minute).

How they reached such a conclusion with even a loose correlation, given the scope of limitations acknowledged in the report, is a bit of a mystery. Learn more about the five key things to know about this study on EIDHealth.org.

Natural Gas NOW readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy. Continue reading →

The post Natural Gas NOW Picks of the Week – December 15, 2018 appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

The trial lawyers bringing climate liability lawsuits against energy producers in California and New York City may have contributed to those locations topping the list of “judicial hellholes,” according to the American Tort Reform Foundation’s (ATRF) 2018-2019 Judicial Hellhole report. ATRF’s annual report identifies the states, cities, and courts with the most “unfair and unbalanced” laws and procedures in the country. California and New York City were crowned the worst and third worst, respectively, while Florida earned the number two spot, coming amid media reports of Sher Edling LLP and EarthRights International pitching their climate lawsuits to several South Florida communities.

See our highlights from the report at EID Climate.

Prolific production in the Permian Basin and large, play-opening discoveries offshore Guyana may regularly grab headlines, but companies like Hess Corp. (NYSE: HES) still see value in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GoM). The New York-headquartered company said Dec. 12 it plans to drill an exploration well in the GoM next year at the Esox prospect, which is located near its Tubular Bells hub. The well will be the first exploration well in the GoM drilled by Hess in some time, Barbara Lowery-Yilmaz, senior vice president of exploration, said during an investor presentation. If successful, the prospect could become another high-return tieback for the company, which brought its Stampede development online earlier this year. Lowery-Yilmaz described Esox, which sits six miles updip from the Royal Dutch Shell Plc (NYSE: RDS.A)-operated Kaikias Field, as a Miocene amplitude-supported subsalt prospect located in a shallower stratigraphic horizon than the producing zones of the Tubular Bells Field.
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People like to be in control, and certainly that’s the case with a producer group like OPEC. But it takes time to turn a proverbial battleship—or crude tanker—around. What if measures intended to balance the market, once implemented, exceed their goal? What if measures are so effective that they need to be reversed, shifting to slower production after earlier running with spigots wide open?
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Alexander Stevens Policy Analyst Institute for Energy Research …. … … Resources such as natural gas effectively expand with population growth because the growth stimulates innovation such that we have inexhaustible natural gas. I encourage everyone to read “The Simon … Continue reading →

The post Inexhaustible Natural Gas: Why We’ll Never Run Out appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

Environmental groups opposed to offshore drilling sued the federal government on Dec. 11 to prevent future seismic tests for oil and gas deposits in Atlantic waters off the U.S. East Coast. Seismic testing, which uses air gun blasts, violates federal laws that protect marine mammals, endangered species and national environmental policy, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston, South Carolina, against U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The U.S. fisheries service in November gave initial permission to five companies to conduct seismic airgun tests beneath a vast region off the East Coast. The permits allow marine wildlife to be harassed but not killed.
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