Water-Energy Choke Point | ModeShift

The Next Era of Hydrocarbon Development: Well Underway and Dirtier Than the First

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 25, 2010June 18, 20140

The most direct path to the nationâ€™s newest big oil and gas fields is U.S. Highway12, two lanes of black top that unfolds from Grays Harbor in Washington State and heads east across the top of the country to Detroit. The 2,500-mile route, parts of which were used by Lewis and Clark to open the American frontier, has quickly become an essential supply line for the energy industry. With astonishing speed and influence, American oil …

Note To Tom Friedman on Choke Point: U.S. Findings

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 16, 2010September 16, 20100

Carl Ganter, the director of Circle of Blue and a colleague, was in China this week attending a World Economic Forum conference. He ran into New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, and talked about the new details Circle of Blue was uncovering about the tightening contest between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water. Carl sent a message last night that Tom seemed interested and asked me to prepare a short summary of …

North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Oil Boom and Risks To Water

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 15, 2010September 15, 20102

Over at Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor, we’ve been working on Choke Point: U.S., a series of original articles about the tightening contest between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water. In our latest chapter, we explored the big boom in oil and gas production on the northern Great Plains, where energy companies are tapping the “unconventional” Bakken Shale. Two miles beneath North Dakota, and below parts of Montana …

Energy Department Blocks Disclosure of Road Map to Relieve Critical U.S. Energy-Water Choke Points

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 9, 2010September 9, 20100

The Illinois River Energy biofuels plant in Rochelle releases plumes of steam at sunrise. The ethanol plant processes over 40 million bushels of corn into 115 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol annually. Earlier this summer my colleagues and I began probing the tightening environmental and economic choke points around the United States caused by rising energy production and diminishing quantities of fresh water. This week we broke a new chapter in the story that …