When the Shale Runs Dry: A Look at the Future of Fracking [1]

Sharon Kelly, DeSmogBlog [2]
Waking Times [3]

If you want to see the future of the shale industry — what today’s drilling rush will leave behind — come to Bradford, Pennsylvania.

A small city, it was home to one of America’s first energy booms, producing over three quarters of the world’s oil in 1877. A wooden oil rig towering over a local museum commemorates [4] those heady days, marking the first “billion dollar oil field” in the world.

But times have changed dramatically in Bradford. Most of the oil has been pumped out, leaving residents atop an aging oil field that requires complicated upkeep and mounting costs. Since its height [5] in the 1940’s, Bradford’s population has steadily declined, leaving the city now home to only 8,600...