By Harriet Blake

Drill, baby, drill may be what’s on the minds of gas companies, but if you’re a landowner of a potential gas site, you probably have a lot of questions.

Thanks to a new software application that’s being test marketed by MIT, landowners may now extract data to see if the gas companies’ proposals to drill are fair and safe. The software tool, called the Landman Report Card (LRC), will help landowners in any state navigate the government and corporate databases, as well as get feedback from other landowners who’ve been in similar situations. And they can do all this before agreeing to a drilling contract.

The term “land man” refers to an oil company representative who often times shows up on the doorstep of unsuspecting property owners who’ve been targeted as having prospective drill sites.

“People often will sign the day the land man shows up at the door,” says MIT professor Chris Csikszentmihalyi. “There are lots of negotiations that people can do, that they often don’t know they can.”

Csikszentmihalyi , co-director of MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, and Sara Wylie, a grad student in the Science , Technology and Society Program, are the directors of the Landman Report Card project, which is coming to fruition just as natural gas exploration in America gains traction as a potential energy source that doesn’t rely on foreign oil — affecting land and homeowners from New York to Texas to the Rocky Mountains states.

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By Heather Ishimaru
KGO-San Francisco

SANTA ROSA, CA — Gas prices have plummeted in recent weeks as dramatically as they climbed over the summer. Drivers are relieved, but is there a downside to the relief at the pumps? Maybe so.

>> Watch now

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By John DeFore

The latest edition of an annual report by the International Energy Agency was released this week, and while the news may not be unexpected, it’s unsettling nonetheless.

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An overwhelming 86 percent of Coloradoans want to limit subsidies for oil shale production and hault new coal-fired power plants, according to a newly released poll.

The survey of 600 Colorado adults conducted by Opinion Research Corporation also found support for
federal and state investment in wind and solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, and highly fuel-efficient vehicles. The study was conducted for TheCLEAN.org and the Civil Society Institute, and was released by Western Colorado Congress, a community action alliance focused protecting and enhancing the quality of life in western Colorado.

Key findings of the poll include:

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By Shermakaye Bass

Republican presidential candidate Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has historically opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), has been uncharacteristically taciturn on the energy issue since he chose pro-drilling Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Green-energy proponents find that ominous.

“With the pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate, John McCain’s race towards the Bush administration’s failed energy policy is now complete,” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said recently. “… No one is closer to the the oil industry than Governor Palin. Along with her support for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts, she also opposes a windfall profit tax on the richest oil companies. …She has been dismissive of alternative energy, saying ‘alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop’, when in reality it is the oil she would like to drill that would take a decade to bring to market.”

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) in Washington, D.C., showed a similar concern over Palin.

“Obviously, it’s a very disappointing pick for a (presidential) candidate who at one time made a priority of getting us away from the old fossil fuels of the past – Sen. McCain,” said David Sandretti, the League’s communications director.

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By Harriet Blake and Barbara Kessler

The battle cry “Drill, baby, drill” got everyone pumped at last week’s Republican Convention because many Americans seem convinced — in spite of contrary evidence — that opening up off-shore oil drilling will actually bring in more oil, and in turn drive down gas prices.

The economic theory is sound: Build oil supply and price comes down. And the emotional response is understandable, gas prices have put a big squeeze on Americans at a time when the rest of the economy is clearly suffering.

But the strategy is flawed, according to many energy experts who’ve been weighing in for weeks, saying that these off-shore locations that have been closed to drilling will not produce a significant amount of oil, and what would dribble in, wouldn’t arrive anytime very soon.

Even the U.S. government’s own experts report that the impact of domestic oil from off-shore drilling would be “insignificant.”

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By Barbara Kessler

Who would have thought we’d be hoping that gas prices had settled in at $4 a gallon? Instead, U.S. government tracking shows that they are creeping past that benchmark, ranging from an average high of $4.59 in California to a low of $3.95 in Texas this middle week of June. It’s making the math a little harder: For awhile there, people in most parts of the country could figure that their 15-gallon tank would cost about $60 to fill. But Californians are now looking at more than $68 and drivers in New York ($63.90) and Washington ($64.95) are facing only slightly less pain. And pity the West Coast truck or SUV driver with a 20-gallon tank, they’ll need nearly $100 to top off.

Are Americans in shock? Um, yeah. Several people we talked to at the pump last week say they’re feeling trapped, but are trying to seize what control they have, making modest changes and thinking about ways out of the oil crunch… Watch the report.

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