Efforts to increase Wyoming coal exports turns the heat up on legal challenges to impacts both local and global
The coal deposits in the Powder River Basin are the most vast and cheapest to mine in the United States. Now mining companies hope to turn what has been a domestic energy resource into an international one, eyeing lucrative markets in growing Asian economies... Read the full article...
Wyoming officials grapple with coal export ambitions while spending millions on clean coal research
In light of the Powder River Basin coal industry’s recent focus to ship more coal to China and other burgeoning Asian economies, industry officials are taking heat for not doing more to support the deployment of so-called advanced coal technologies here at home... Read the full article...
New reference book offers exhaustive overview of Yellowstone geography
Deciding exactly where and what Yellowstone is depends on whom you ask, and what data is used to answer the question. A newly published reference book aims to define Yellowstone in as many ways as possible, using more than 800 maps with thousands of illustrations... Read the full article...
Debate rages over the impact of federal regulations on drilling, jobs
A day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved a major new natural gas drilling project in Utah, a new study concludes that federal regulations have delayed 22 major drilling projects representing thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact... Read the full article...
EPA gives heavily drilled Wyoming area three years to improve
U.S. EPA has determined that southwest Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin no longer meets federal ground-level ozone pollution standards, a conclusion that could significantly affect two of the nation's largest oil and natural gas fields... Read the full article...
Deer-ly Departed: Revelation of mule deer ‘stop-over’ behavior may alter drilling plans in Bridger Teton Forest
Plans to introduce 136 natural gas wells into the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields in the Wyoming Range. But the project has drawn objection from the conservation community, who've been fueled by a new research report detailing mule deer behavior... Read the full article...
Investors and royalty owners itching to see initial production results from exploratory Niobrara oil wells may see a logjam of information released after the first of the year.
A major fight is set to erupt over how much information oil and gas drillers should be required to publicly disclose about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, government and …
Environmentalists blasted federal plans for allowing nearly 500 new coal-bed methane wells in northeast Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, arguing that the proposal imperils an elk herd and threatens the area’s …
Representatives from the University of Wyoming and its industry partners in the Wyoming Carbon Underground Storage Project are studying the viability of injecting billions of tons of carbon dioxide — …
Carbon dioxide leaking from underground storage sites could contaminate drinking-water aquifers with dangerous levels of pollutants such as uranium under the wrong conditions, a new study finds.
In the arid rolling hills and grasslands of southeast Wyoming there is no surplus of groundwater to allocate, said Bern Hinckley, a hydrogeologist who runs a consulting firm in the …
The federal agency cited for an overly “cozy relationship” with the energy industry, which may have contributed to the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, has enjoyed extensive Wyoming political and economic …
In the summer of 2008, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, went to California for meetings with state officials and utility executives. What he brought was, quite literally, a burning question.
Federal regulators are nearing approval of a natural gas development project in southwest Wyoming that would serve as a testing ground for new mineral extraction technology while becoming one of …
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net. 202/628-6500
By Debra Kahn, ClimateWire
Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) is determined to levy a production tax on wind power …
by Jonathan Thompson/High Country News
I first see the turbines as I speed along I-25 near Glenrock, Wyo., clutching the steering wheel as I try to avoid being swatted into oblivion …
As environmental concerns threaten to derail natural gas drilling projects across the country, the energy industry has developed innovative ways to make it easier to exploit the nation’s reserves without …
We project that future oil and gas development will cause a 7–19 percent decline from 2007 sage-grouse lek population counts and impact 3.7 million ha of sagebrush shrublands and 1.1 …
Gov. Dave Freudenthal has asked the federal Minerals Management Service to let the state conduct an audit of three years of natural gas royalties collected under the controversial federal Royalty-in-Kind …
For more than a decade, West Virginia Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall watched powerlessly as the Bush administration and a Republican Congressional majority made Royalty in Kind the main method …
When President Bill Clinton signed the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Simplification and Fairness Act of 1996 into law in Jackson Hole, his Washington, D.C.-based Minerals Management Service director, Cynthia …
On a cold, blustery January 28, 2009, the newly appointed Secretary of the Interior of the United States, Ken Salazar, arrived at the headquarters of Minerals Management Service at the …
Since Royalty in Kind became a priority for the oil and gas industry in the late 1990s, a handful of Wyomingites have played key roles in making in-kind royalties part …
Energy companies now extract over 450 million tons of coal, over 2,254 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and over 53 million of barrels of oil from Wyoming annually. These …
Bring Severance Tax Rates Into State Budget Discussions
Hikes should be part of an overall review of revenues and tax investments
By Dan Neal and Sarah Gorin
No more Centennial Singers?
No more Geology …
Wyoming’s U.S. Rep Cynthia Lummis responded to WyoFile questions on Royalty in Kind via e-mail through her press secretary Ryan Taylor.
Here are the WyoFile questions and Lummis’ responses:
WyoFile: …
(Telephone Interview with WyoFile editor Rone Tempest, June 3,2009)
WyoFile: On October 6, 2005, the then Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners (Gov. Freudenthal; Treasurer Cynthia Lummis; Sec. of State Joseph …
Get Involved! Ask Your Lawmaker for Change Here!
Wyoming has not raised its basic severance tax for oil, gas, and coal for 28 years.
WyoFile would like to see that change.
Right now, …
Severance tax collections evolve in stages that depend upon price, the amount of mineral left in the ground, and the shape of a state’s finances.
In America, severance taxes began in …
Casper — Watching Wyoming voters line up out the polling-place doors earlier this month, in lusty support of the “drill baby drill” philosophy of natural resource management, one recalls the …
Sheridan — The ancient Greeks had a word, ?????? or kairos, which means an era of unique opportunity. It’s an unspecified period of time ripe for taking advantage of changing …
Sheridan – It’s the beginning of May and my furnace is running like hell. The problem isn’t my furnace, which is only a few years old, it’s my house.
It was …
After years of construction inactivity and several false starts, some wags in Wyoming’s coal rich Powder River Basin began to refer to the proposed billion dollar Two Elk power plant …