West Texas is booming again — a major increase in oil and gas drilling is bringing jobs, prosperity and new development in the region. But it’s also having an impact on roads, water and the culture of West Texas. So please join us if you can tonight, Tuesday, August 13th, at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, at a special forum to discuss these issues.
Our panel will consist of energy industry experts and community representatives to discuss the impact of oil and gas drilling in West Texas. The event is free and open to the public and will be held at the Cooper Auditorium in the Science and Technology building at UTPB.Ā The public is invited to ask questions of the panel as part of the community forum.
We’ll discuss how drilling is changing West Texas, from its impact on the economy, to the strain on roads and housing, to balancing water demands. Continue Reading →
Well in Rusk County in one of the oldest oil fields in Texas
But Are They Being Penalized Enough?
The state’s regulator for oil & gas drilling, the Railroad Commission of Texas, said it’s charged over $2.1 million in penalties called “severance fees” to drilling violators so far this fiscal year that ends August 31. That’s almost double the amount in 2010.
“The severance fee charges are up, because in May 2012 the commission instituted a 150 percent surcharge on most fees paid to the commission, including severances,” wrote the commission’s spokesperson, Ramona Nye, in an email to StateImpact Texas.
The fees result when the Railroad Commission uses one of its harsher enforcement methods: an order to shutdown production because a well operator has failed to correct violations. The Railroad Commission says the majority of violations are corrected before that happens.
But when operators correct problems only after the severance order has been issued, they then have to pay the fee before they can legally resume production after bringing wells into compliance with state laws. Continue Reading →
Scientists in the Gulf are conducting groundbreaking research on shark behavior.
Itās early August, and that means that this week millions of Americans are watching one of TVās greatest aquatic traditions: Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.
Texans, whose state borders a body of water teeming with sharks of all sizes and species may want to take special notice. According to Dr. Greg Stunz, there are some sizable specimens in the Gulf of Mexico.
āBig ones,ā he said in describing some of the Gulfās sharks. ā9-feet, 600-pound kind of [sharks]. āThey-could-easily-eat-peopleā kind of size.ā
Dr. Stunz is a Professor of Marine Biology and an Endowed Chair for Fisheries and Ocean Health at Texas A&M University ā Corpus Christiās Harte Research Institute. Heās currently researching shark behavior and population trends off the Padre Island National Seashore.
Stunz is one of the first scientists to gather data on shark growth and movement in the Gulf. He and his team have tagged over one thousand sharks in order to better understand which species are most common, where they occur, and how often they breed.
āWe donāt have answers to those questions,ā Stunz said.
Michael Webber of UT Austin says energy and water are highly dependent on each other.
A Conversation with Michael Webber
We’ve arrived in the dog days of summer in Texas, when air conditioners across the state stretch our power supplies thin. It’s also dry: the state is in a third year of drought, with reservoir levels at 63 percent full overall, down significantly from a year ago. In short, Texas needs more water and more power, and the two are highly dependent on each other.
Where those thirsts for more power and water collide is referred to as the ‘Energy-Water Nexus,’ and it’s a subject University of Texas at Austin professor and Deputy Director of the UT Energy InstituteĀ Michael Webber has spent a lot of time on. “Energy uses a lot of water, and water uses a lot of energy, and this fact is surprising for a lot of people, just how much they use of both,” Webber says.
For instance, energy needs water to grow biofuels, drill and produce oil and gas, cool power plants and power hydroelectic dams, Webber says. And water needs energy to be heated, treated, cleaned and moved. Getting water cleaned up and into our homes makes up over 12 percent of our nation’s energy use, Webber says.
We sat down with Webber to talk about these issues in advance of a lecture in Austin Tuesday, August 6 about “The Global Nexus of Energy and Water.” The talk is free and open to the public, at 5:45 pm at the AT&T Conference Center. (More details here.)
Q: So energy needs water, and water needs energy, and I would imagine that this nexus is even more pronounced here in Texas.
A: These days in Texas, it seems like weāre worried about the grid being on edge. Weāre worried about drought, and these things sort of play into each otherās hands in a bad way. As we have more drought, we have less water available for our dams to make electricity, we also have less water available for cooling our power plants. And as that water gets hot from heat waves, water is less effective as a coolant, and so the power plants perform with lower efficiency. So a water strain or water constraint becomes an energy constraint, so itās true also that if you have an energy constraint ā if you have a power outage or a rolling blackout, your water infrastructure might be hindered as well. So the energy-water nexus means they rely on each other, and that means — bad news — they inherit each otherās vulnerabilities. A constraint in one becomes a constraint in the other. Continue Reading →
The Denver, Colorado skyline in January 2012. Denver, located on the dry side of the Continental Divide, has instituted a number of programs to encourage water conservation.
As the region looks at a future of growing population and shrinking supplies, many cities are trying to adapt. We decided to take a look at ten of them, including several in Texas.
A few caveats: many of the cities listed here share similar water conservation programs, such as outdoor watering restrictions or pricing systems that charge heavy water users more per gallon. And the programs described here do not reflect all the water programs that exist in each city. Continue Reading →
A chemical trailer sits among the remains of the burning fertilizer plant in April.
A few months after a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, President Barack Obama signed an executive order today that aimed at increasing safety and oversight of chemical plants across the country. In a series of measures, various federal, state and local agencies would share more information and look for best practices to reduce risks from such facilities.
The explosion in April at the West Fertilizer plant took 15 lives and destroyed hundreds of homes and schools. While the origin of the fire that led to the explosion has still not been determined, investigators have said that it was ammonium nitrate stored at the plant that exploded. Among several issues believed to have been a factor in the fire and explosion are the facts that the facility had stored the chemical in wood buildings, and had no sprinklers.
Many of those killed in the explosion were first responders, who had rushed towards the plant to fight the fire after it ignited. Today’s executive order calls for improving coordination with local governments and first responders, and make sure they have “ready access to key information in a usable format” about chemical facilities.
The order also calls for government agencies to find chemical facilities that haven’t provided all the information they’re required to or are not following federal safety requirements. Continue Reading →
Photo Illustration by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images
Despite a domestic drilling boom, gas prices are still relatively high.
The drilling processes of hydraulic fracturingĀ —Ā or “fracking” — and horizontal drillingĀ have made it possible to access previously unreachable deposits of fossil fuels, creating a surge in domestic oil and natural gas production. So why are prices at the gas pump still relatively high? (Last week, the average national gas price was $3.68 per gallon.)
He said there are multiple reasons why gas prices are still up, even though the country is producing more than it has in some time: Continue Reading →
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