The rapid expansion of hydraulic fracturing to retrieve once-inaccessible reservoirs of oil and gas could put pressure on already-stressed water resources from the suburbs of Fort Worth to western Colorado, according to a new report from a nonprofit group that advises investors about companies’ environmental risks.

Energy companies are being allowed to pollute drinking water aquifers with oil and gas drilling and fracking waste in Northern Colorado and Denver. Over the past 13 years, the U.S.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency released a progress report on Friday about its national study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water supplies. In nearly 200 pages, the agency lays out data, case studies and a summary of research into issues like spills and the treatment and disposal of wastewater.

Locked up inside the 6 million years of sediment that makes up the Green River Formation, which extends across mostly public lands in Colorado and Utah, may be the equivalent of a few trillion barrels of oil. Even if only half of it is recoverable, the oil shale of the Mountain West could one day fuel the world, turning the phrase "U.S. energy independence" from slogan to reality.

Gas drilling companies are working to figure out better ways to recycle and reuse water in the drilling process that may make evaporation pits “a thing of the past,” an industry spokesman said Thursday. Doug Dennison, environmental and governmental affairs representative for the Bill Barrett Corp.

 A new race for water is rippling through the drought-scorched heartland, pitting farmers against oil and gas interests, driven by new drilling techniques that us

New statewide regulations about setback distances and the plugging of abandoned wells near horizontal hydraulic fracturing operations are two issues high on the state oil and gas commission’s priority list, the organization’s head said at a natural-gas and oil regulatory meeting in Durango on Thursday.

Risk analysts have concluded that the disposal of contaminated wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") wells producing natural gas in the intensively developed Marcellus Shale region poses a substantial potential risk of river and other water pollution.

Is gas drilling ruining the air, polluting water and making people sick? The evidence is sketchy and inconclusive, but a lack of serious funding is delaying efforts to resolve those pressing questions and creating a vacuum that could lead to a crush of lawsuits, some experts say.