Energy & Industry

A controversial new report on the economics of Powder River Basin coal was written by a University of Wyoming economist — and paid for by the Wyoming Mining Association. As you might expect, the report provides some boosterish facts about coal:

Yet another group is demanding that the federal government regulate hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), the process used to extract oil and natural gas, because it threatens human health. In a report released yesterday, Drilling Around the Law, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) argues that fracking could contaminate drinking water supplies “from Pennsylvania to Wyoming,” but […]

In Avatar, there’s an economic reason, of course, that humans have traveled to Pandora. Early on in the movie, we’re shown the temptation: a sample of the element levitates in midair, silver, alluring—and apparently worth $20 million a kilogram. Considering the production expenses for Avatar were an estimated $230 million, it would take only 12 […]

They were, to say the least, a bit promiscuous. Between 2006 and 2008, the Bureau of Land Management — the primary agency responsible for overseeing drilling on federal lands — permitted more than 6,100 oil and gas projects without detailed environmental review using special “categorical exclusions,” according to a Government Accountability Office analysis. The waivers […]

    For a few months a couple of years ago, my daily dog walk usually involved joining two old-timers — Lloyd “Sawdust” Wilkins. then 82, and his blue-heeler Cindy, who was about 70 in dog years.      Sawdust walked his daily mile — it was on doctor’s orders — slowly with a cane, but he […]

One of the big obstacles to industrial-strength solar power is space: photovoltaic technology used in solar panels, which transforms sunlight into an electrical current, takes up valuable real estate. And one of the biggest obstacles to portable solar power is also size: Who wants to haul around a 2-pound PV panel just to charge a […]

The proposed Desert Rock power plant on the Navajo Nation near Farmington, N.M., will need to find a new source of cash after the U.S. Department of Energy denied a $450 million stimulus funding bid for carbon-capture controls last week. The funding would have covered about 43 percent of the cost of those controls. The […]

The carbon emissions trading scheme known as cap-and-trade is on the global table as the United Nations Climate Change conference gets underway this week in Copenhagen.  Cap-and-trade is also a feature of the Waxman-Markey bill currently being reshaped by the U.S. Senate after passage in the House in June. Hailed by supporters as “an important […]

    The attorneys for Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who made bogus bids at a BLM drilling-rights auction last year, have come up with a new line of defense: selective prosecution.      DeChristopher is charged with such federal felonies as interfering with a government auction and making a false representation. If convicted, he […]

Plans to move forward with what would be the third- or fourth-largest copper mine in the country have been shelved for another year. The U.S. Forest Service has postponed an environmental impact study for a proposed copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., until April 2010 (see our 1997 […]