It is boom time in the deserts of New Mexico and West Texas, where vast oil reserves buried in the Permian geological basin are getting a second life, thanks to fracking. Though tapped for more than a century, the basin still contains the largest oil reserve in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. Output has tripled in a decade. And big oil appears determined to tap every last drop.
In October, Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental, one of the largest operators there, promised yet more production in a basin that Bloomberg last year described as “uniquely positioned to become the world’s most important growth engine for oil production.”
Did nobody tell them about climate change?
The fossil-fuel business is burgeoning too on the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean, at the giant Bovanenkovo gas field in…
Read the full article originally published at e360.yale.edu.