After holding five public meetings in January and February on saltwater disposal wells, the City Council appeared divided Tuesday March 20,2012 over whether to lift the moratorium on the wells or to permanently ban them.

Briefing the council, Rick Trice, assistant director of planning and development, laid out options including moving forward with a hearing, extending or lifting the moratorium, and prohibiting the wells. The council opted for the hearing, but there was no consensus. Read more »

Oil prices are climbing near $108 per barrel as optimism grows about a strengthening global economy.

A private survey of the U.S. homebuilding industry on Monday March 19, 2012 found that companies are increasingly hopeful that home sales will rise in coming months. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde also said over the weekend that the global economy has "stepped back from the brink."

The rise in oil also follows last week's rally on Wall Street. Read more »

Data from the state show that many counties don't have any gas drilling wells tapping into the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation and may never have any despite the proliferation of them elsewhere.

U.S. Geological Survey maps indicate the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation thousands of feet underground in large parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia, doesn't exist in the heavily populated southeastern portion of Pennsylvania. Read more »

When Edge Resources recently announced that it had partnered with an international nonprofit group to create a sustainably developed gas drilling property in south Arlington, local environmentalists and drilling critics probably perked up their ears. Getting the gas drilling industry to acknowledge and minimize the environmental effects of their activities is a battle that citizen groups have been fighting for a decade in North Texas, with only limited success. Read more »