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US BLM issues draft PEIS for oil shale and oil sands; significantly scales back public land available for commercial leasing

Green Car Congress

The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has published the Notice of Availability (NOA) of the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) and Possible Land Use Amendments for Allocation of Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resources on Lands Administered by the BLM in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

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NRC report concludes hydraulic fracturing poses low risk for causing earthquakes, but risks are higher for wastewater injection wells; CCS impact undetermined

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Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) extracts natural gas by injecting a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals in short bursts at high pressure into deep underground wells. Δσ refers only to the radial stress in the exterior region. ΔV * and Δσ ? 0; if the medium is much stiffer, then ΔV ?

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Devil in the Details: World Leaders Scramble To Salvage and Shape Copenhagens UNFCCC Climate Summit

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At issue is the 2012 expiration of the Kyoto Protocol, a binding but effectively unenforceable 1997 treaty that had set greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets for 40 industrialized countries, referred to as Annex 1 countries, yielding an average GHG reduction of 5.2% Canada’s 2009 GHG emissions are 48.7%

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Microbial Capacitive Desalination Cell could make treatment and reuse of oil and gas wastewater simpler, cheaper

Green Car Congress

Oil and gas operations in the United States produce about 21 billion barrels of wastewater per year, with accompanying disposal costs of about $5 billion per year. Fracking refers to the process of injecting a slurry of water, sand and chemicals into wells to increase the amount of oil and natural gas produced by the well.

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