Drilling down into the report reveals still more serious omens.
Drilling services giant Halliburton released its U.S. quarterly earnings report this week, highlighting record revenue generation due to expanded land-based drilling operations and international activities.
Even the EPA report acknowledges that Pavillion's drilling conditions are far different from other areas of the country, such as the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania.
Benjamin Fulford in Tokyo (also twice, for an early report on huge multinational stakes in gas drilling off Russia's Sakhalin Island and a profile of a frustrated inventor at Toshiba) and Deborah Orr in New York, for her account of the Barilla pasta family.
According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report on unconventional gas shales, directional drilling (sometimes referred to as horizontal drilling) allows for access beyond the area below the drill to both oil and gas reserves in locations inaccessible to conventional drilling, including to difficult to reach offshore reserves.
This report examines the survey results for those interested in drilling more deeply into the numbers.
The report contains recommendations for improved safety measures in offshore drilling.
The task force report featured a recommendation for a six month moratorium on all deepwater drilling activities.
The EPA's initial report concluded that there was a link with the waste-water produced by drilling for gas.
It coincided with the release of a report commissioned by Cuadrilla which found it was "highly probable" that shale gas test drilling triggered two earth tremors near Blackpool.
BBC: Hesketh Bank fracking rig protesters guilty of trespass
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