This is the agency that supervises pipeline safety in the United States. Their website hosts a trove of resources including the National Pipeline Mapping System that you can use to find pipelines in your local area.

The largest refining hub in the U.S. is located in the Texas-Louisiana coast, but there are smaller hubs all over the country.

Some utilities, like Seattle City Light, are owned by municipalities. Others, like Dynegy Inc., are publicly traded. And others, such as TXU or Puget Sound Energy, belong to private equity firms.

A barrel is equivalent to about 42 gallons. A company or a field’s production, or a refinery’s processing capacity, is usually measured in barrels per day.

The way of life in communities all over the U.S. is being transformed by new techniques in oil drilling. For example, large swaths of the U.S. Northeast – New York, Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania – sit below a rich natural gas field called the Marcellus Shale, and there’s drilling going on under local churches, schools, airports, and cemeteries.

You may come across different kinds of crude (i.e. crude oil) in your reporting, such as Brent Crude or West Texas Intermediate.

The U.S. produces over 90 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day. The average home uses about 200 cubic feet per day.

Biofuels are made out of (recently) living organisms – such as plants and animals. Traditional biofuels are ethanol made out of sugar cane or corn, and biodiesel is made of soy, animal fat, or palm oil. Cellulosic biofuels are the next generation: produced en masse from vegetable waste.