Energy

Image: The blockchain was developed as a means of creating digital property without the need for a central authority keeping track of who owns what. Photograph: Jacob Carter/Rex/Shutterstock

theguardian.com - July 7th 2016 - Alex Hern

Have you heard the good news? The blockchain is here – and it’s going to save everything.

If you aren’t tied to the tech community, you might not have picked up on this salvation rhetoric.

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Image: Jesse and Shirley Eakin stand by the water well they no longer use at their home in Avella, Pa. Delivered water is stored in the tank behind them.

huffingtonpost.com - June 23rd 2016 - Maryam Jameel

Sixty years after his service in the Army, Jesse Eakin still completes his outfits with a pin that bears a lesson from the Korean War: Never Impossible.

That maxim has been tested by a low-grade but persistent threat far different than the kind Eakin encountered in Korea: well water that’s too dangerous to drink. It gives off a strange odor and bears a yellow tint. It carries sand that clogs faucets in the home Eakin shares with his wife, Shirley, here in southwestern Pennsylvania.

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Pump jacks sit idle on a South Texas ranch near Bigfoot. Deserted drilling wells are the relics of every oil bust, and Texas is pitted with more than any other place in the U.S.  Eric Gay/AP

dallasnews.com - by Chris Siron - The Associated Press - by Paul J. Weber - June 19, 2016

The worst oil bust since the 1980s is putting Texas and other oil producing states on the hook for thousands of newly abandoned drilling sites at a time when they have little money to plug wells and seal off environmental hazards.

In Texas alone, the roughly $165 million price tag of plugging nearly 10,000 abandoned wells is double the entire budget of the agency that regulates the industry.

The state's regulators want taxpayers to cover more of the clean-up, supplementing industry payments.

As U.S. rig counts plunge to historic lows, and with at least 60 oil producers declaring bankruptcy since 2014, energy-producing states are confronting holes in their budgets and potentially leaking ones in the ground.

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The East Hampton Star - Letter to the Editor 06.09.16 - by Linda James

Return of Wind Power - East Hampton - June 6, 2016

Dear David,

Last week, the U.S. Interior Department, following a presidential directive, announced it would lease 81,000 ocean acres off New York’s coastline for wind development. Announcing this new leasing auction, in a release by Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Sally Jewell, secretary of the Interior, was quoted: “In addition to providing clean power, offshore wind energy marks a new frontier in renewable energy development, creating the path for sustainable electricity generation, job creation, and strengthening our nation’s economic competitiveness.”