MIDLAND-ODESSA — It’s happened before, and it could well happen again. The current surge in drilling in West Texas is a product of advancing technique and technology, but it’s also a function of price and demand. So if the market will pay a certain price for oil or gas, it makes sense to drill. If it doesn’t? Well, that’s the side of the boom that people don’t like to talk about. Welcome to The Bust.
The last time a major bust hit Midland-Odessa was in the early eighties. Leading up to that time, high oil prices brought prosperity (including a Rolls Royce dealership) and development. High rises went up, and there was so much demand for housing that “newcomers to the city were living in tents, cars, and trailers,” according to the Texas State Historical Association. But when the price of oil dropped rapidly and supply greatly increased, drilling pretty much came to a stop in the Permian Basin. The Rolls Royce dealership closed. Three banks failed, causing depression-style runs on deposits. Offices became vacant, and new houses sat unsold.
Now, several decades later, things are booming again. Midland is now the second wealthiest city per capita in the country. Mercedes and BMW dealerships are open along Andrews Highway. A job at McDonald’s here starts at $14 an hour, with a signing bonus. Unemployment is at one of the lowest rates in the country. But there’s also a palpable fear the boom could bust again. All it would take is a drop in the price of oil. If that happens, Texas’ boom could be the victim of its own success.
A cooler-than-normal August allowed a power-hungry state to avoid electricity strains this summer.
Congratulations! You’ve survived another summer, and Texas has made it to September without any serious strains on its electric grid. That’s thanks in part to last month’s cooler than normal weather, according to a new federal analysis.
From the Energy Information Administration (EIA):
“August is typically the peak demand month for electricity in Texas, and sustained high temperatures can lead to stress on the electric grid. Although August saw temperatures rise above 105 degrees, the prolonged heat that can stress the grid beyond its capabilities did not materialize.
During the summer when temperatures are high, demand for electricity to cool homes and businesses increases. Although electric systems are designed to meet peak demand, consecutive high-demand days can strain power plants and transmission facilities and lead to unplanned outages. Very high wholesale electricity prices are often indications of this type of system stress.”
One consequence of less demand? Lower wholesale prices on the Texas energy market, according to the report. That can mean less incentives for power generators to build new plants in the deregulated Texas market, which has led to a debate on what the state should do to better secure its supply of power.
A third earthquake shook Timpson,Texas early this morning. It measured a 2.4 on the Richter Scale and comes on the heels of two stronger quakes that hit on Labor Day. At least one of those prompted reports of damage.
If you visit this site often, chances are you’ve read about Timpson. It’s an East Texas community home to just over 1,100 people that seems to get more than its fair share of earthquakes.
Up until the recent spate of quakes, Timpson had never felt an earthquake before, at least not since the USGS started keeping records. That might be related to something else that Timpson has in abundance: injection wells for storing waste water produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Science has proven the link between injection wells and seismic activity (which is the same thing as earthquakes). And researchers are studying that link in Timpson.
AMARILLO — By an interstate overpass along the languid Canadian River near Amarillo, off-road vehicles zooming by are a common sight.
“They get in the river and run up and down it,” said Gene Wilde, a professor of biology at Texas Tech University. It’s legal, he said, but “they’re not supposed to get in the water. Technically, if there was a federal marshal out here, that is harassing the fish.”
Wilde has reason to care: The Arkansas River shiner — not a beer but a small, silvery minnow — likes to spawn in this river, with its sandy shores. The fish, which is no longer found in Arkansas, has a prime spot on the federal government’s list of threatened species. Drought diminished the river — and the fish — so badly two years ago that Wilde and others collected shiners to take to a hatchery in Oklahoma.
But the Canadian’s challenges go well beyond off-roaders bumping through delicate habitat. The river itself is “pretty puny,” said Kent Satterwhite, general manager of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which supplies water for Panhandle cities and industries. Despite its name, the authority now gets its water from the Ogallala Aquifer, and two years ago it spent tens of millions of dollars to buy more Ogallala rights from the oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens. Continue Reading →
As the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) considers changing the electricity market so there’s more money to build new power plants, a mystery has popped up: why aren’t Texans using as much electricity as predicted?
“There’s something that’s been going on recently with the forecasts, which affects a lot of things,” said PUC commissioner Kenneth Anderson at the commission’s open meeting last week.
Who Turned the Lights Out?
Anderson said forecasts from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) had predicted electricity demand would increase in 2013 by 2.1 percent.
In reality?
“It’s been barely one percent, if it’s even hit one percent,” Anderson said. Continue Reading →
VIDEO: The First Festival in West, Texas Since the Explosion
After a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas this April that killed 15, the federal government issued updated recommendations for the safe storage of ammonium nitrate Friday.
The recommendations, known as a chemical advisory, had not been updated since 1997. The new guidelines warn that ammonium nitrate can become “much more likely to explode” under conditions like those found at the fertilizer plant in West and other facilities in Texas.
But the advisory is just that — advice. It is not a regulation itself, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and “cannot and does not impose legally binding requirements on the agencies, states, or the regulated community,” the agency says. Rather the purpose of the advisory is to “raise awareness” and “share lessons learned from past incidents.”
Ammoniun nitrate can explode “when stored near other material that can add fuel to the ammonium nitrate — such as grain, sugar, seeds, sawdust, and most especially petroleum fuels such as diesel,” the advisory says. It adds that “the presence of fuel and/or heat (and especially both) near ammonium nitrate is a very high hazard situation,” especially when stored in confined spaces.
The plant in West stored ammonium nitrate in wood buildings, and had no sprinkler system. Continue Reading →
Click image to see the location of the two quakes that hit this Monday. They are represented by yellow dots. Find more info here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
If you visit this site often, chances are you’ve read about Timpson. It’s an East Texas community home to just over 1,100 people that seems to get more than its fair share of earthquakes.
Up until the recent spate of quakes, Timpson had never felt an earthquake before, at least not since the USGS started keeping records.
Timpson now has somewhat frequent earthquakes, but it also has a lot of something else: injection wells for storing waste water produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. By our last count, Shelby County where Timpson is located, is home to 27 active injection wells.
Science has proven the link between injection wells and seismic activity (which is the same thing as earthquakes). And researchers are studying that link in Timpson.
Cattle rustling, the age-old crime of stealing livestock, might seem like something for the history books. But, as our readers and listeners learned last month, Texas ranchers are seeing an increase in stolen cows, even as the number of cattle dwindles.
The report generated a lot of interest. It went viral online and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.
But, as is often the case, we still have more of the story to tell. This time in pictures.
Click the player above to view an audio slideshow of photos snapped on a recent reporting trip to Giddings, Texas and hear the NPR report. Peruse the text after the jump to learn more about black market bovines, and the people we met while reporting.
It took years to reach a final decision, but on Wednesday the Dallas City Council denied several permits for a company hoping to drill within city limits. The company, Trinity East, had applied to drill and use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” at several wells on city land, including a golf course.
While the permits were denied, the story isn’t over. As reporter BJ Austin at KERA Dallas notes, the city has already taken money from Trinity East, and could be on the hook since the permits were denied:
[Council member Philip] Kingston and five other council members voted no – denying the required 12 votes to approve the drilling. Mayor Mike Rawlings announced that he is personally is against gas drilling in Dallas.
“To paraphrase Ecclesiastes there is a place for everything under heaven and I don’t think that place for gas drilling is Dallas,” Rawlings explained. Continue Reading →
The Motiva refinery is bordered by neighborhoods in Port Arthur
When your neighbors process millions of barrels of crude oil, you notice when things aren’t going right.
“There has been some increase in flaring incidents, because whenever you shut down they have to flare to let off certain gases,” said Hilton Kelley.
He lives in Port Arthur and years ago he led community activists in negotiations with the companies behind the massive expansion of the Motiva Refinery.
Hilton said the companies promised the new refinery would run cleaner using innovations in pollution control. What the activists didn’t think to ask for was a promise the refinery — now the nation’s largest — would just simply … run.
“We had no idea that the unit would not start off working properly,” said Kelley, founder of Community In-power and Development Association. Now he wonders what a series of leaks, fires, shutdowns and start-ups will mean to the air residents breathe.
Fires, Leaks, and Vibrations
The Motiva Port Arthur Refinery is a $10 billion joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi -Aramco. The expansion was finished last spring, but quickly ran into trouble. There were a couple of small fires, apparently related to leaks caused when a corrosive chemical was mistakenly allowed to flow through the new unit, causing extensive and costly damage. Continue Reading →
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AMARILLO — By an interstate overpass along the languid Canadian River near Amarillo, off-road vehicles zooming by are a common sight.
