Message From the Editor

The decade-long fracking boom in Appalachia has not led to significant job growth, according to a new study. Despite the region’s extraordinary levels of natural gas production, it found that the industry’s promise of prosperity has “turned into almost nothing.” The report looked at how 22 counties across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio — accounting for 90 percent of the region’s natural gas production — fared during the fracking boom. It found that counties that saw the most drilling ended up with weaker job growth and declining populations compared to other parts of Appalachia and the nation as a whole. Nick Cunningham reports.

Meanwhile, another report warns that pipeline construction projects worldwide have put $1 trillion worth of pipeline investment at risk of being rendered obsolete by the energy transition away from fossil fuels. The risky projects include over 131,000 miles of pipe, both oil pipelines like the Dakota Access pipeline and — to an even higher degree — new natural gas pipelines. Sharon Kelly has the story.

And in case you missed it, Shell has revealed its “accelerated” strategy to reduce oil production and decarbonise its products by 2050. CEO Ben van Beurden said the strategy would “drive down carbon emissions and deliver value for our shareholders, our customers and wider society”. But campaigners say the new net zero strategy is “grotesque” and includes an “impossible” reliance on tree-planting. Read more from Phoebe Cooke.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmogblog.com. 

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

P.S. Readers like you make it possible for DeSmog to hold accountable powerful people in industry and government. Even a $10 or $20 donation helps support DeSmog’s investigative journalism.

Appalachian Fracking Boom Was a Jobs Bust, Finds New Report

— By Nick Cunningham (7 min. read) —

The decade-long fracking boom in Appalachia has not led to significant job growth, and despite the region’s extraordinary levels of natural gas production, the industry’s promise of prosperity has “turned into almost nothing,” according to a new report. 

The fracking boom has received broad support from politicians across the aisle in Appalachia due to dreams of enormous job creation, but a report released on February 10 from Pennsylvania-based economic and sustainability think tank, the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), sheds new light on the reality of this hype.

$1 Trillion in Oil and Gas Pipelines Worldwide Could Become Stranded Assets, New Report Warns

— By Sharon Kelly (9 min. read) —

On January 7, 2021, Energy Transfer was notified by its insurer, Westchester Fire Insurance Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that it had lost a $250,000 surety bond for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) — a bond that Iowa, one of the four states it passes through, required the pipeline to maintain.

That loss of insurance coverage comes as the Biden administration and a federal court each must confront a decision about whether to order DAPL to shut down, after a federal appeals court last week upheld a lower court’s finding that the oil pipeline still lacks a completed environmental review. Financial observers have been watching DAPL closely — and a new report warns that DAPL is hardly alone in the oil and gas pipeline industry in facing major financial risks linked to projects' environmental impacts.

Shell’s 'Delusional' Net Zero Strategy Commits $8 Billion to Fossil Fuels

— By Phoebe Cooke (4 min. read) —

When Congress lifted the export ban on U.S. crude oil in December of 2015 to allow for exports beginning in 2016, the oil industry celebrated. However, looking back at the impact of lifting the 40-year-old ban, it appears the move has helped hasten the financial demise of the U.S. oil industry — while also increasing the industry’s huge contribution to climate change.

In many ways, the U.S. oil and gas industry’s demise is self-inflicted. When historians look back upon its declines, lifting the export ban will likely mark a turning point where the industry made a huge bet on the profitability of fracking for oil in the U.S. — and subsequently began to dig its own grave.

Fossil Fuel Air Pollution Linked to 1 in 5 Deaths Globally, New Study Reveals

— By Nick Cunningham (5 min. read) —

Fossil fuel air pollution is responsible for roughly one in five deaths worldwide, a much higher death toll than previously thought, according to a new study published Tuesday.

Poor air quality from burning fossil fuels such as coal and diesel was responsible for more than 8 million deaths in 2018, according to research published February 9 in the journal Environmental Research by Harvard University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester, and University College London.

£335: The Price of Tullow Oil's Environmental Failings — and a Boy’s Funeral

—By Maina Waruru and Joe Casey (8 min. read) —

Following a disputed presidential election at the end of 2007, violence broke out in Kenya that saw thousands of people displaced from their homes and left more than 1,000 dead.

Among the displaced was Joseph Loree, a 58-year-old father of eight who lived and worked in the Rift valley region of the country, the hotbed of tribal clashes. He and his family fled from his workplace at a farm in Trans Nzoia County to escape the violence, settling in his ancestral Lokichar in Turkana County, as an Internally Displaced Person (IDP).

Living With Natural Gas Pipelines: Appalachian Landowners Describe Fear, Anxiety and Loss

— By Erin Brock Carlson, West Virginia University and Martina Angela Caretta, Lund University (7 min. read) —

More than 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines run throughout the United States. In Appalachia, they spread like spaghetti across the region.

Many of these lines were built in just the past five years to carry natural gas from the Marcellus Shale region of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where hydraulic fracturing has boomed. West Virginia alone has seen a fourfold increase in natural gas production in the past decade.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Judith Curry

Judith Curry is the former chairman (2002 - 2014) and former professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She resigned from her position at Georgia Tech on January 1, 2017, citing the “craziness” of climate science, and plans to focus on her private business, Climate Forecast Applications Network. Judith Curry continues to write and speak prolifically on the climate change issue and run the blog Climate Etc. Curry has been invited by Republicans to testify at climate change hearings regarding alleged uncertainties regarding man-made climate change. She has been criticized by climate scientists for her climate outreach in the blogosphere based on assertions not necessarily supported by the evidence: particularly that the “climate always changes.”

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.