Terrence Henry reports on energy and the environment for StateImpact Texas. His radio, print and television work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, The Texas Tribune, The History Channel and other outlets.
He has previously worked at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
Next week's OTC conference will have a full session on offshore wind and wave energy. Pictured here: the Fukushima Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Japan.
Tens of thousands of folks from the offshore drilling industry will gather in Houston starting Monday for the massive, week-long Offshore Technology Conference, aka OTC. Since 1969, the conference has been a hotspot for offshore oil and gas technology. Think of it as SXSW for offshore drilling.
But it’s not all fossil fuels grabbing attention. A full technical program at the conference Thursday will look at ‘Offshore Wind and Wave Energy,’ with a keynote by Greg Matzat, Senior Advisor for Offshore Wind Technologies at U.S. Department of Energy.
“It’s a component of energy resources that are going to be developed offshore, so it’s a natural fit for our program,” says Stephen Graham, executive director of the conference.
It’s not the first time offshore wind and wave energy have been explored at the conference, Graham notes. But there’s new support in Texas for researching offshore wind’s potential, including millions of dollars for research from the state and federal governments.
Another topic on tap next week will feature experts from Japan talking about their work producing natural gas from methane hydrates, which are trapped in ice deep below the ocean floor. There are potentially massive deposits of natural gas that could be produced if harvesting methane hydrates proves viable, including in the Gulf of Mexico.
Texas Tech climatologist Katharine Hayhoe was recently selected as one of Time Magazine's '100 Most Influential People.'
Yes, you can believe in both God and climate change. Just ask Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, who is well known for her work on the impacts of climate change. She’s also an evangelical Christian, and has become a vocal proponent for doing more to bridge the divide between faith and science.
After receiving the honor, she spoke with KUT’s David Brown, host of the forthcoming daily news show, Texas Standard. Hayhoe learned of her selection via email. “I actually thought the email was spam at first,” Hayhoe tells Brown.
Take a listen to Hayhoe explain how she thinks accepting and acting on the science of climate change is a responsibility for Christians:
Receding waters have ravaged communities in the Highland Lakes.
It’s almost strange to refer to the Highland Lakes of Central Texas as “lakes.” They’re sitting at just over a third full, and Lake Travis looks more like a river with plenty of bare, scraggly shoreline. The lake system is the crucial water supply for the million-plus people in and around Austin, and they could reach their lowest levels ever this summer.
While the drought is one of the reasons the Highland Lakes are in dire straits, they would be about double their size today if massive amounts of water hadn’t been sent downstream to rice farmers in 2011. It was enough water from the lakes to supply the City of Austin’s share for three years. And the decision to release that water – by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) – is coming under renewed criticism from Republican state Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horsehoe Bay), chairman of the powerful Senate Natural Resources Committee. He’s threatening to try and have the LCRA’s permit revoked.
Fraser says that decision three years ago to release water to rice farmers is just one of several mistakes made by the LCRA during the drought, but it might be the costliest. “Because they mismanaged the lakes, they’ve now caused [for] themselves a financial crisis,” Fraser says. Continue Reading →
A chemical trailer sits among the remains of the burning fertilizer plant in April 2013.
Federal Agency Says ‘It Should Never Have Occurred’ Â
A year after a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a federal agency is releasing a report saying the disaster was preventable.
The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates chemical accidents and issues recommendations to ensure public safety, is presenting its preliminary findings tonight in the town of West, Texas, where the fire and subsequent explosion last year took 15 lives, injured hundreds, and destroyed homes and schools.
“It should never have occurred,” Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso, the head of the agency, says in a statement. “It resulted from the failure of a company to take the necessary steps to avert a preventable fire and explosion and from the inability of federal, state and local regulatory agencies to identify a serious hazard and correct it.” Continue Reading →
Memorials near the site of the explosion in the town of West, Texas.
State Lawmaker Leading Review Says Nothing’s Changed
WEST, TX — Trucks and bulldozers are still working here, the site of an explosion a year ago today. A deadly blast tore through this small community, killing fifteen and injuring hundreds. Homes and schools were destroyed, with the damage estimated to be over a hundred million dollars. There’s a lone charred tree that still stands at the location of the blast, but other than that, the site is mostly empty. Crosses and memorials that read “West Strong” and “West is the Best” line the road.
The explosion at the West fertilizer plant was one of the worst industrial disasters in Texas history. So what’s Texas doing to prevent it from happening again?
“Well, technically, nothing has been done,” says state Rep. Joe Pickett (D-El Paso), chair of the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee. Pickett says since West happened near the end of the legislative session, he didn’t want to rush in any “knee-jerk” rules or regulations.
The state is making an effort to get more timely and accurate information from fertilizer facilities in Texas about how much ammonium nitrate they have. That chemical was the culprit in the blast (investigators are still trying to determine what caused the small fire that ignited the ammonium nitrate). Ammonium nitrate was also behind the Texas City disaster of 1947Â that killed hundreds, and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 that killed 168.
“We’re slow learners, I guess,” says Tommy Muska, mayor of West. “History shows us ammonium nitrate is a dangerous product.” Continue Reading →
Crews are still working to clear the site of the explosion in West, Texas.
This week marks a year since a fertilizer plant exploded in the small Texas town of West, killing fifteen, injuring over a hundred, and destroying homes and local schools. Today, a meeting at the state legislature made it clear that lawmakers aren’t in any hurry to use regulation to guard against something like West from happening again.
The House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee met for the first time since August to look into the industrial disaster. The State Fire Marshal told the committee that his office is still not sure what sparked the fire. It could have been electrical, or a malfunctioning golf cart battery, or it could have been started on purpose. But without question, the cause of the destructive blast was ammonium nitrate. The fertilizer had been legally stored in a wooden building with no sprinkler system.
What new rules and regulations should be considered to prevent another West? Two clear solutions emerged at the hearing: stricter standards for storing ammonium nitrate, and more training and coordination for local officials and first responders.
More than 150,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil spilled into the Houston Ship Channel on March 22, 2014 after a collision between an oil barge and a ship.
Workers use ATVs, tractors and large dump trucks on the island’s beaches to clean up the spill.
The island is a wildlife refuge for migratory birds and several endangered species. It’s also home to alligators like this one.
Tons of oil have been cleaned up from the island’s beaches.
The island is an important stop for migratory birds.
Nancy Brown with Fish & Wildlife observes a whooping crane in the distance
The attempts to clean up the spill are having an environmental impact of their own.
Within days of the spill, the spread of the bunker fuel was apparent. Oil was detected 12 miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, March 23, and globs of tar and oil were seen along Texas City shores and beaches in the area.
Cleanup efforts are being organized by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and officials say they are at least several weeks away from fully containing the fuel.
Mose Buchele took the photos above of the spill’s impact on Matagorda Island. Check back tomorrow for his story on how the cleanup effort istelf could disturb the delicate ecosystem and endangered wildlife of the Gulf Coast.
Russell Gold, author of a new book on fracking, says that this drilling revolution is "transforming the United States."
If you ever talk about the surge in oil and gas drilling in Texas and the rest of the country by calling it a “boom,” you might upset someone in the oil and gas industry. That’s because if you call it a “boom,” that means at some point there’s going to be a “bust.”
“This revolution is transforming the United States,” Gold writes. “To a remarkable extent, this once-obscure oil-field technique defines the nation’s economic and environmental future.” A hundred new wells are drilled and fracked every day, he writes.
Gold sat down with David Brown of KUT’s Texas Standard to talk about why this boom is different, and some lessons for the oil and gas industry going forward. Take a listen:
‘The Boom’ hits bookshelves (both virtual and real) this week.
A jointly-owned oil rig atop the Eagle Ford shale south of San Antonio.
But That Could Spell Trouble for Texas’ Drilling Boom
From the first geyser to burst from the salt domes of Spindletop to the Texas fracking pioneer George Mitchell, who helped unlock massive oil and gas deposits in shale, the Lone Star State has always been willing to gamble on drilling. And the bets are big. The latest boom has been mostly the work of companies and investors with access to plenty of capital — it’s estimated each oil well in the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas costs between $5 and $10 million to drill.
Now, with a minimum investment of $80,000, one Texas company is offering you your very own oil well. Oil Boom USA, a subsidiary of Texas oil and gas company Nakoma Petroleum, is inviting investors into the oil well game. Why? Because it’s an “unequaled tax shelter” and “exciting and fun,” according to the company’s website.
But opening up drilling to more than just oil and gas companies could signal trouble for the industry. As Michael Webber, Deputy Director at the University of Texas’s Energy Institute, explains to KUT’s Texas Standard host David Brown, oil well investing is “pretty good on the way up, but it could be pretty bad on the way down.” Continue Reading →
Cooling towers of a nuclear power plant in Grohnde, Germany. Texas Governor Rick Perry says he wants the state to come up with a solution for disposing of or storing spent nuclear fuel.
The storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste is a tricky process, both from a safety and political point of view. As a result, that waste is now piling up around the country with nowhere to go. And Texas Governor Rick Perry is wondering if perhaps the Lone Star State could give it a home.
In a letter to the leaders of the state Senate and House, which you can read below, Perry says that Texas has “no choice but to begin looking for a safe and secure solution for HLW [high-level radioactive waste] in Texas.” Perry attached a 49-page report he commissioned from a state environmental agency that says that a facility for waste in Texas is “not only feasible but could be highly successful.”
The letter, first reported by Asher Price in the Austin American-Statesman today, lays out what have become familiar arguments from those hoping to make Texas a home for the nation’s unwanted isotopes: the federal government isn’t following through on its promise to take care of it, states paid the feds to fulfill that promise and got cheated, and Texas can do it safely (and, it would follow, profitably). Continue Reading →
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