Abrahm Lustgarten

California Halts Injection Of Fracking Waste, Warning It May Be Contaminating Aquifers

State’s drought has forced farmers to rely on groundwater, even as California aquifers have been intentionally polluted due to exemptions for oil industry.

July 21st, 2014

By Abrahm Lustgarten

California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state's drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers there. The state's Division of Oil and Gas and

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BP Agrees To Plead Guilty To Crimes In Gulf Oil Spill

BP agreed to plead guilty today to charges of manslaughter, environmental crimes, and lying to Congress in connection with the 2010Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, which killed 11 workers and sent as much as 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, […]

November 16th, 2012

By Abrahm Lustgarten

BP Agrees To Plead Guilty To Crimes In Gulf Oil Spill

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The Trillion-Gallon Loophole: Lax Rules For Drillers That Inject Pollutants Into the Earth

On a cold, overcast afternoon in January 2003, two tanker trucks backed up to an injection well site in a pasture outside Rosharon, Texas. There, under a steel shed, they began to unload thousands of gallons of wastewater for burial deep beneath the earth. The waste – the byproduct of oil and gas drilling – […]

September 21st, 2012

By Abrahm Lustgarten

The Trillion-Gallon Loophole: Lax Rules For Drillers That Inject Pollutants Into the Earth

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New Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies. Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling […]

July 10th, 2012

By Abrahm Lustgarten

New Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania's natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies. Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the

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Injection Wells: The Poison Beneath Us

Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation’s geology as an invisible dumping ground. No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and […]

June 22nd, 2012

By Abrahm Lustgarten

Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation's geology as an invisible dumping ground. No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and

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A Punishment BP Can’t Pay Off

by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica, April 19, 2012, 8 p.m. This story first appeared on the website of ProPublica. Two years after a series of gambles and ill-advised decisions on a BP drilling project led to the largest accidental oil spill in United States history and the death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil […]

May 01st, 2012

By Abrahm Lustgarten and
Associated Press