At a marina in Moundsville, West Virginia, Dan Williamson looked out across the Ohio River at a quiet stretch of land on the other side. “There’s a little activity going on,” said Williamson, a spokesman for PTT — an oil and gas company based in Thailand that wants to build […]
Read MoreAuthor: Reid Frazier
Democrats Could Field An Anti-fracking Candidate In 2020. Can They Win In Pennsylvania?
Standing on the side of a road that hugs the Ohio River, Jeff Nobers stared across the water at a massive construction site: towering cranes, scaffolding, a maze of pipes. On the site of what will be Shell’s multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant, 6,000 union workers are putting together an ethane cracker, […]
Read MoreUneasy State of Affairs: Scotland’s Use of American Shale Gas
On a quiet street overlooking Scotland’s largest refinery and chemical plant, Kevin Ross surveyed the newest outgrowth of the American fracking boom. Since 2016, gas from the U.S. has been feeding the Grangemouth petrochemical plant, a vast complex of cooling towers, tall flares and pipelines. The gas is harvested in Western […]
Read MorePA Prosecutors Eye Potential ‘Environmental Crimes’ of Oil and Gas Companies
When he ran for attorney general in 2016, Josh Shapiro promised to prosecute the state’s fracking industry. In a campaign ad, he said regulators in Pennsylvania were being too soft on polluters. “All they’ve ever gotten is a slap on the wrist. It’s time for that to change,” Shapiro promised. “I’ll hold […]
Read More‘Razorblades & Feathers in My Throat’: A Fire at a Pittsburgh Steel Plant Made a Major Polluter Even Worse
The complaint came in on an answering service for the Allegheny County Health Department’s air quality hotline on Dec. 26 at 8:17 p.m.: “SMELL IS VERY BAD CANNOT EVEN LET DOGS OUT.” Another came in later that night, from Squirrel Hill: NEIGHBORHOOD SMELLS OF ROTTEN EGGS. Two days later, a […]
Read More‘I Won’t Move. I Love Greene County.’ – Dave Hathaway’s Struggle to Stay, Part One
Dave Hathaway is a coal miner in Greene County, in the very southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. Apart from a brief stint living in Colorado as a child, he’s lived his whole life there, and he’s never really thought much about leaving. So, when he was laid off in late 2015, […]
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