A rig contracted by Apache Corp drills a horizontal well in a search for oil and natural gas in the Wolfcamp shale located in the Permian Basin in West Texas. A successful petition in Denton could bring fracking bans to communities around the state.
Come elections in November, the city of Denton could be split between two very different futures.
The Denton Drilling Awareness Group (DAG) recently got enough signatures on a petition to place an ordinance banning fracking within city limits on local ballots. Though other communities in Texas have passed restrictions on fracking, a moratorium on drilling activity within Denton could spur the rise of similar legislation across the state.
If the ban passes it will likely provoke a precedent-setting legal battle that would help clarify the authority of local governments over oil and gas operations in Texas. Continue Reading →
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, whoĀ 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.Ā 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 →
Update 10 p.m. Tuesday:Ā The Fort Worth City Council has delayed for one week a vote to permanently restrict outdoor watering to twice a week.
Council member W. B. Zimmerman asked for the additional time to educate the public about proposed conservation plans.
Sal Espino, who represents District 2, was opposed to the delay. He said: “I would be in favor of moving forward with this ordinance, imperfect as it may seem to some, and then later changing it or tweaking, because we’ve already been doing twice per week watering.”
Original story:Ā Since last June, Fort Worth has been restricting outdoor watering to twice a week because of drought conditions. Those measures may become permanent if the City Council adopts a proposed water ordinance Tuesday night.
But as water usage is down, water rates are going up. 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).Ā Continue Reading →
Drilling for oil & gas can generate thousands of barrels of waste per well
In one of the hottest plays for natural gas drilling, Bob Patterson wonders if what the drilling industry leaves behind will come back to haunt the community.
“Itās just a ticking time bomb before we have major aquifer contamination,” Patterson told StateImpact.
Patterson’s fear is about what are called reserve pits. The earthen pits are dug on the site of a drilling rig. Into the pits go thousands of barrels-worth of drilling waste. The waste comes back up out of the well as the drill cuts thousand of feet down into the earth. The waste can be a muddy, oily mix of saltwater, sand, and drilling fluids and can contain chemicals and diesel fuel.
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