Before dawn on a fall day in 2022, Texas air analysts approached a mobile monitoring van parked on the edge of Odessa, in West Texas. They were hit with the stench of rotten eggs, the telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide. The invisible poisonous gas had seeped in, saturating the van. Breathing it in, the state workers grew sick: racing heartbeats, headaches, nausea. Their equipment had picked up what internal notes would later call “insanely high” levels of gas in the neighborhood. Next door, Va

Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as

In the far reaches of the African rainforest lives a timid creature known as the forest elephant. Camera traps sometimes catch blurs of gray passing by during the night, leaving behind broken branches and trampled grass as they tread familiar paths through the trees, a behavior passed down by those lucky enough to have survived the civil wars that consumed Central Africa and decimated its wildlife at the turn of the century. Park rangers catch sightings of them only fleetingly. Unlike their sava

On the sprawling edge of Port Harcourt, a city in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, metal towers shoot jets of red and golden flame into the sky. Even at a distance from the flares the air is thick and hot to breathe saturated with toxic pollutants. Yet life persists here. Every morning, around 5am, dozens of women can be seen drying sheets of cassava under the searing heat. It is dangerous work: two locals recently died when the gas flare shot out, while others have had their skin burned off in flaring

In this heavily drilled North Texas city, a UK-based investigative reporter finds echoes of TotalEnergie’s oil exploitation of Nigeria, Iraq, and Kurdistan. ARLINGTON, Texas—The 10-mile stretch of drill sites and compressor stations between the far side of Lake Arlington and Fire Station 15 is known as a “sacrifice zone” by many of those who live along this stretch of North Texas suburban sprawl. Around 400 gas wells already exist inside the City of Arlington, and another 17 are being drilled b

Researchers, journalists and activists have long used satellite imagery to track emissions of oil and gas companies. Now, the companies are using a new technology that could make that more difficult. Energy companies across Europe are using new technology that hides when they’re burning greenhouse gases they don’t use, a new investigation shows, obscuring the emissions they release during the process. This could make a new EU law aimed at cutting emissions harder to enforce. Companies operating

Eight hundred metres away from one of the largest oil wells in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Ali Hassan can’t sleep - the oil flares lighting up the sky outside his window keep him bed bound. A nasty smell is spreading through Khabat, on the road to Mosul, as the flaring intensifies, and some residents are struggling to breathe. “It gets inside the houses, even when you block the windows and doors,” Hassan said.* His parents are coughing from the fumes. They were sleeping on the roof — as is com

Erbil, Iraq – Shireen*, a 53-year-old Syrian refugee living at the Kawergosk Camp in Erbil, Iraq, started to have cancer symptoms in March 2020. “In the beginning, I had a lot of pain in my breast, back and arm. I ignored the pain because I thought it could be muscle spasms or an infection,” she said. The only option for her to seek treatment was the camp’s health centre, where services were limited. She could not leave the camp due to a COVID-19 lockdown, and private clinics were too expensiv

Poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas is known in the oil industry for its ability to kill quickly, but less attention has been paid to those community members breathing in lower levels of the gas in their daily lives. The Examination teamed up with the Houston Chronicle to investigate how H2S is affecting Texans. Here's what to know about how the gas can affect you. Sometimes called “sour gas,” H2S forms underground as plants and organisms decay, and can get released into the air during oil producti