The BLM's 2013 decision to open these public lands to oil shale and tar sand leasing was made possible under the Bush administration, which after meetings with the oil and gas industry pushed forward ...

Fracking-the high-pressure injection of water, chemicals and sand into shale deposits to release the gas and oil trapped within the rock-in recent years has been combined with horizontal drilling ...

Operators drill down thousands of feet—more than a mile—to reach shale and then drill thousands of feet more horizontally through the formation. They pump a mixture of liquid and sand at high ...