A recent article in The Nation magazine, in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), made a series of declarations and assertions about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, specifically with respect to agriculture and America’s food supplies. It was a frightening tale, but the facts that were left out were just as notable (if not more so) than what was selectively chosen to be included.

From reviving local steel mills in blue collar communities to supporting family businesses, responsible shale development is transforming and reshaping our economy for the better. And according to an analysis by USA TODAY, oil and natural gas development is also rapidly increasing personal income in small towns – reversing a decade’s long trend and shifting significant wealth toward rural areas of the country that certainly can use the boost.

While Pennsylvania continues to reap the benefits of shale gas development, New York again gets hit with another delay in the regulations they have been waiting on for more than four years. The Department of Environmental Conservation will miss the November 29th Deadline they set to have the regulations completed. The most ironic part about this constant feet dragging is the oil and gas industry has been operating safely in New York since 1821, when the first commercially produced well was drilled in Fredonia. Yes, the industry has been developing in New York for a long time including in the wine-rich Finger Lakes region.

A new paper by two experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters suggests that Cornell professor (and activist) Robert Howarth’s thesis about greenhouse gas emissions from shale is even more irreconcilably divorced from the facts than was previously thought.

When you add up the TEDX paper’s flaws, it’s hard to see what scientific purpose it serves. It includes air quality measurements, but makes no connection between those measurements and nearby wellsites. Those measurements also show air quality levels are safe. The rest of the paper is mostly unsupported opinion and speculation from a group with a clear agenda against natural gas development.

The past few weeks have left many in New York wondering if Gov. Andrew Cuomo actually wants to see responsible Marcellus development move forward in his state. Unfortunately, if the comments he made on Tuesday’s edition of the Fred Dicker show are any indication, it’d be tough to conclude that he genuinely does.

As President of the Ground Water Protection Council, I have been involved with FracFocus, the Chemical Disclosure Registry website managed by the GWPC and IOGCC, since its inception in 2010. Recently, attempts have been made to paint FracFocus as an incomplete, inaccurate, and insufficient means of reporting hydraulic fracturing chemicals. It’s time to set the record straight.

According to a new Food & Water Watch report, hydraulic fracturing is a “false solution” that will not have a material impact on U.S. energy security. The entire report, from the title to the footnotes and everything in between, is essentially a compilation of statements that are contradicted by the facts, credible experts, publicly available data, and even good old common sense. And although F&WW was able to secure some headlines upon releasing this booklet of debunked talking points, the public, as always, is much more interested in the truth – and deserves it, too.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) examines the numerous avenues for economic growth resulting from American natural gas development, especially from shale. Thanks to a combination of factors – large resource base, affordability, environmental benefits, and manufacturing demand – natural gas is at the center of an economy built for the future.

A recent “investigative report” from ProPublica argued that injection wells used by the oil and natural gas industry aren’t subject to enough regulation, and the rules that do apply are “ignored or circumvented.” Fortunately for the public, the facts demonstrate these wells are in fact tightly regulated, deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and subject to much more oversight than the authors of the report would like you to believe.

A new study by Eduardo B. Olaguer of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) purports to show that emissions from oil and gas operations will prevent nearby metropolitan areas — particularly Dallas-Fort Worth — from meeting federal ozone standards. Fortunately for people in the Metroplex, empirical data shows that such a conclusion is simply unsupported by the facts.

A state representative from Western Pennsylvania has attacked the Pennsylvania DEP in a story reported in the New York Times and elsewhere with some fanfare, but readers need to know the background of the accusers, the real causes underlying their complaints and the facts about what belongs and doesn’t belong in a testing report.

Pa. state Rep. Jesse White released a press release yesterday making accusations against Pa. DEP with regard to water sampling in Washington Co. White and the plaintiff’s attorneys say DEP committed a “criminal” act by only screening for eight of 24 metals as part of a investigation into water contamination. The reality: Pennsylvania does the same thing as every other state – and by the way: those other metals have nothing to do with oil and gas.