The Stream, June 16: Texas Drought

The worst Texas drought in more than a century may cripple the oil- and natural gas- drilling boom in the state as government officials are starting to ration the water supplies for energy exploration and hydraulic fracturing, Bloomberg reports. The shortage is intensifying the competition for water between the agriculture and energy industries, as power companies are going farther afield to buy water from farmers, irrigation districts and municipalities.

Meanwhile, this Foreign Policy blog post peeks into the factors that are roiling the global market for crude oil.

China Beat talks with environmental Historian Kenneth Pomeranz about China’s water crisis.

A fourth environmental activist has been killed in the Amazon in just a month amid conflict over land and logging, the Associated Press reports. Here’s more context from The New Yorker and a comment by the Guardian.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has disclosed the names of 150 chemicals that were investigated in health and safety studies but whose identities were withheld as confidential business information, according to The New York Times Green blog.

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