Last week, CEA issued a Call To Action urging energy consumers across the country who are concerned about energy access to urge the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to move forward with a proposed Integrated Activity Plan that allows for expanded oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska as well as infrastructure development necessary to support oil and gas development offshore in the Chukchi Sea.  Other organizations within Alaska also announced ‘Calls to Action’.  Today we will be finishing our hearing report ("Alaskans Rocked Last Night") complete with photos and with links to some of the presentations.

The Houston Chronicle: Drilling boom spurring clean up push
The oil and gas drilling boom that has sent thousands of workers and rigs into North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Texas now is spurring another gold rush, as companies jockey to clean up the briny, metal-laden water that pours out of wells nationwide. The potential prize is huge, because the hydraulic fracturing process that is key to unlocking new oil and natural gas reserves involves blasting millions of gallons of water, along with sand and chemicals, deep underground to break up dense rock formations and unlock the hydrocarbons trapped inside.
 
Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2010, the leaders of the commission President Barack Obama had appointed to investigate the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico sat down in the Oval Office to brief him. After listening to their findings about the BP accident and the safety of deepwater drilling, the president abruptly changed the subject. "Where are you coming out on the offshore Arctic?" he asked. William K. Reilly, a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency and a commission co-chairman, was startled, as was Carol M. Browner, the president’s top adviser at the time on energy and climate change. Although a proposal by Shell to drill in the Arctic had been a source of dissension, it was not a major focus of the panel’s work.