How Local Zoning Works In Texas, Oklahoma And Other Drilling States

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

November 21, 2012 | 1:07 PM

As Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court weighs whether or not to throw out language in Act 13 restricting municipalities’ ability to regulate natural gas extraction, EnergyWire examines how local zoning works in other drilling-heavy states:

The administration of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) is suing the city of Longmont, suburban community north of Denver, to overturn its ban on drilling in residential neighborhoods. In the election earlier this month, residents voted to add a citywide ban on hydraulic fracturing.
…But lack of uniformity hasn’t pinched development in Texas. The Lone Star State still accounts for the lion’s share of drilling in the United States. The rig count in the Permian Basin that surrounds Midland has doubled since the beginning of 2010. Perry says about 10 companies drill within the city limits.
And in Oklahoma, where the fervor for drilling is no less intense, some cities flat-out ban drilling within their city limits. Among them is Tulsa, which once billed itself as the Oil Capital of the World.