US oil companies hit with lawsuits over fracking-related spills
- December 1, 2021
U.S. oil and gas companies have been hit with dozens of lawsuits over their failure to clean up spills of fracking-generated wastewater in Pennsylvania, Wyoming and New York.
The lawsuits allege that the companies violated state law by failing to warn of a potential threat of a fracking-linked oil leak.
The companies have faced similar lawsuits in Wyoming, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, and the suits allege that in the case of the Wyoming oil spill, the state’s oil and natural gas regulator did not properly oversee the spill response.
The complaints are the latest legal fallout from the U.N. report that said fracking-induced oil spills could increase by up to 40 percent by 2040 in the United States.
The U.K. government issued a similar report last year, and several other countries are considering or have begun to enact laws that would require oil and other forms of fossil fuels to be treated differently from other types of fossil fuel, such as coal.
The oil and mineral industry has been pressing the U,S.
government to make the fracking-gas-related oil spill issue a priority, saying the U of S is moving too slowly in the fight against climate change.
The industry has accused the U government of being slow to address the issue.