Washita River Bridge to be Detonated on Tuesday

The old State Highway 19 bridge over the Washita River near Lindsay will be blown up Tuesday by the State Transportation Department. It’s being replaced and crews will detonate controlled charges on the center span of the bridge at 8 a.m. The bridge was damaged in heavy flooding more than a year ago. If things …

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Nation’s Oil Rig Count Grows with $50 Oil Prices

      The nation’s oil and gas rig count grew by 10 over the past week as oil prices remained steady around the $50 a barrel mark.  Oklahoma’s count remained steady at 58 compared to last week, according to figures released by Baker Hughes Company of Houston, Texas. The nation’s count grew to 424, …

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Opposition Surfaces to Pipeline in Cleveland County

Opponents of a proposed pipeline from Cushing to Longview, Texas plan to voice their concerns at a Monday afternoon meeting of the Norman Floodplain Permit Committee. The developer is the same company responsible for the Santa Barbara, California pipeline spill that led to grand jury indictments on 46 criminal counts. It is opposition to the …

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Captain Planet? It’s what One Newspaper Calls Oklahoma’s Secretary of Energy

Spreading the word about Oklahoma’s earthquakes and what might be causing them.  it’s what Secretary of Energy and Environment Michael Teague is doing and recently spoke in Ardmore. “That’s not natural,” said Teague in an address at the Southern Oklahoma Leaders Luncheon in the Ardmore Convention center. He was referring to the fact that there …

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Leaking Storage Ponds Prompt Judge to Allow Lawsuit by Environmentalists

A judge in Billings, Montana is allowing environmentalist to proceed with a lawsuit against operators of a coal-fired power plant that continues leaking contaminated water from storage ponds. District Judge Robert Deschamps made the ruling after learning that contaminated water was still leaking form the ponds of the Colstrip Power Plant four years after an …

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Governor Fallin Stops $250,000 Salary to New CEO at State’s Anti-Tobacco Group

The screeching of brakes you heard at the State Capitol are coming from the office of the governor in a flap over the high salary to be paid to a former energy regulator. If Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has anything to say about it, the $250,000 salary the State Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust wants to pay …

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Weather That Feels Like 120 Degree Heat

Whether you’re pumping or drilling for oil and gas in northwestern Oklahoma, cutting timber in the southeast or mining coal in the east, it’s hot and dangerous weather. Not so much because of the high temperatures but the effect of high humidity with those temperatures. As State Climatologist Gary McManus with the Oklahoma Mesonet pointed …

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No Decisions Yet on Interim Legislative Energy Study Requests

Oklahoma House Speaker Jeff Hickman has yet to announce the list of interim study requests that could be approved on such topics as oil and gas drilling restrictions, and ways to handle wastewater disposal in the state. “Speaker Hickman is expected to announce those studies that are approved by July 8,” according to OK Energy …

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Scam Alert Issued by OGE

OG and E is warning about another scam, one in which a man posed as a utility worker visiting the homes of customers to collect past due bill payments. “The company wants its customers to know it does not send representatives out to customers’ homes to collect payments,” said Kathleen O’Shea, a spokeswoman for OG&E. …

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Devon Energy Divests Total of $2.1 Billion as Part of Restructuring Efforts

In an effort to transform itself through restructuring, Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. announced on Wednesday that it will sell all remaining non-core assets in the Midland Basin of west Texas for a combined $858 million in two separate transactions. The latest non-core divestitures bump up the company’s recent sales amounting for nearly $2.1 billion, according to the company’s …

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