Abandoned oil and gas wells are found in significant numbers in some 27 states. Reporters who want to track their status can dig into several databases, but will need to support their data crunching with lots of shoe-leather and ground-truth reporting. Reporter’s Toolbox has insights into what the databases offer. Plus, a primer on API numbers.
"To hear Emil King tell it, the benefits of the 8,000-odd solar panels shimmering before him on an industrial lot in Washington D.C. go far beyond helping the U.S. capital city fight climate change."
"Gov. Wes Moore’s nominee to the Maryland Public Service Commission withdrew from consideration on Tuesday, after environmentalists criticized the appointment of someone who was an official in the fossil fuel industry."
"Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited the Pittsburgh area Thursday to announce the plugging of the first 10 abandoned oil and gas wells in the area paid for with funds from the 2021 infrastructure law."
"Residents who filed a federal lawsuit in the fiery derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals along the Ohio-Pennsylvania line are seeking to force Norfolk Southern to set up health monitoring for residents in both states."
"In the Chesapeake Bay, a fight is raging over a little fish with an outsized importance."
"Over the week of July 4, 2022, people flocking to Chesapeake Bay’s Virginia coast were met at the water’s edge by hordes of ghastly visitors: schools of hand-sized silver menhaden washed up by the thousands, their carcasses floating in the surf in the summer’s heat. By the week’s end, as the fish liquefied in a dumpster at a nearby wharf, circulating petitions were gaining signatures.
"Federal law enforcement officials have arrested two people accused of conspiring to “completely destroy Baltimore” in what they described on Monday as a racist plot to demolish the power grid in a predominantly Black city."
"Pennsylvania’s environmental regulator says, over a five-year period, more than half of conventional oil and gas operators failed to report how much gas they pulled from the ground and whether their equipment is safe."
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