Texas

Energy and Environment Reporting for Texas

Dave Fehling

Reporter

Dave Fehling is the Houston-based broadcast reporter for StateImpact. Before joining StateImpact Texas, Dave reported and anchored at KHOU-TV in Houston. He also worked as a staff correspondent for CBS News from 1994-1998. He now lectures on journalism at the University of Houston.

Tracing Traffic Pollution as Texas Port Expands

A pickup truck equipped to detect pollution is a project of Rice University and the University of Houston

Courtesy Rice University

A pickup truck equipped to detect pollution is a project of Rice University and the University of Houston

At Rice University in Houston, environmental engineer Rob Griffin is working on a project that uses a pollution detection device as big as a pickup truck. Actually, it is a pickup truck.

The mobile pollution lab has been roaming the streets and highways of Houston since this fall. The project won’t be done for at least another year.

“We are going to have a lot of data. This is going to be an incredibly massive project,” Griffin told StateImpact. Continue Reading

Texas Neighborhoods Where Climate Change Could Hurt

Nadia Siddiqui is a policy analyst at the Texas Health Institute

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

Nadia Siddiqui is a policy analyst at the Texas Health Institute

Texas needs to do more as a state to prepare its most vulnerable communities for the impact of climate change according to health researchers.

“We may face the ‘perfect storm’ in the State of Texas where the most vulnerable, low income communities, high-diversity communities are very disproportionately impacted and affected,” said Nadia Siddiqui. Continue Reading

Did Texas Hurt Industry by Fighting EPA Greenhouse Gas Regs?

ExxonMobil's refinery in Baytown is one of the nation's biggest

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

ExxonMobil's refinery in Baytown is one of the nation's biggest

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has begun the process to begin issuing air pollution permits for industrial plants that emit greenhouse gases linked to climate change. The permits will be based on new rules put in effect in 2011 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in response to research on global warming.

It’s probably not a result Texas Governor Rick Perry had in mind back in 2010 when he and the Texas attorney general held a news conference. They said the new rules would be so costly to industry that they would be disastrous for the Texas economy.

“My office has worked closely with Attorney General Abbott to consider all options to challenge this seriously flawed EPA finding…to head off an economic calamity…We are challenging the EPA’s findings for CO2 and other greenhouse gases,” Perry said in February 2010. Continue Reading

Why Foreign Companies Love Texas (Hint: Oil & Gas)

These days in Texas, you can’t go far without running into a billion-dollar industrial plant or drilling operation backed by some very non-Texan investors.

OCI's Omar Darwazah

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

OCI's Omar Darwazah

“We’re very big fans of Texas,” said Omar Darwazah, a corporate development executive with OCI.

OCI is a fertilizer chemical company now based in the Netherlands but with roots in Egypt. A couple years ago it bought and rejuvenated an ammonia-methanol plant in Beaumont. A few weeks ago it announced it was building a new methanol plant next door that will cost at least $1 billion.

“And that’s the largest in the United States and arguably the largest in the world,” Darwazah told StateImpact.

Continue Reading

The $4 Billion Texas Electric Bill

NRG Limestone Electric Generating Station in Limestone County

Photo by Dave Fehling

NRG Limestone Electric Generating Station in Limestone County

When it comes to spectator sports, it might not rank with college football in Texas. But when a state senate committee held a hearing last week to figure out if something  is wrong with the state’s deregulated market for electricity, people far from Texas were glued to their computers, watching the hearing live over the internet.

“In all my experience, I’ve never really seen anything in which the Texas Public Utility Commission’s officials have been taken to task in such an aggressive manner by a state legislative hearing,” said Paul Patterson, a New York-based investment analyst who watched the hearing.

Patterson and others who keep close tabs on the nation’s electricity industry are eager to see how Texas handles a problem also facing other states: is there a risk of power shortages if more power plants aren’t built? And if the risk is real, who will foot the gigantic bill?  Continue Reading

Would Igloos Lower Risk of Fertilizer Explosions?

Dome at fertilizer facility near Bryan where fire in 2009 destroyed wood structure

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

Domes at fertilizer facility near Bryan where fire in 2009 destroyed a wooden structure

In response to the deadly explosion six months ago in West, Federal agencies will soon be making recommendations to Congress on how to reduce the risk at fertilizer storage facilities. Should igloos be among the ideas?

“There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the West (fertilizer) had been in a dome it would have lost the top, you would have heard a lot of noise, but it would not have damaged the buildings around it,” said David South, president of Monolithic, a company in Italy, Texas that designs concrete dome structures. Continue Reading

Boiling Hot: How Fracking’s Gusher of Geothermal Energy is Wasted

Crew installing geothermal power generator at well site near Laurel, Mississippi.

Courtesy Gulf Coast Green Energy

Crew installing geothermal power generator at well site near Laurel, Mississippi.

There are thousands of oil & gas wells in Texas that tap into the earth’s supply of hot water, some of it a boiling hot 250 F. There are modern, high tech steam engines that could use the water to make electricity. There was a federally-funded experimental power plant that proved the technology could work in Texas.

Yet, geothermal power has gotten a cold shoulder in the state.

“They made (the power plant) work, they proved it was successful, and then they dismantled it because they didn’t have funding to keep the project going,” said Maria Richards, a researcher at Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Laboratory. Continue Reading

How Oil & Gas Drillers Are Trying to Earn Cred with Environmentalists

Vented natural gas burns at processing facility in DeWitt County

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

Vented methane gas burns at processing facility in DeWitt County

When the Environmental Defense Fund and researchers from the University of Texas wanted to find out just how much methane gas was coming from natural gas production sites, they ended up getting “unprecedented” access. The researchers had approached nine, big oil & gas exploration companies, gaining permission to do testing on 190 production sites nationwide.

“It definitely took some conversations with these companies to build a comfort and a trust level that this wasn’t a ‘gotcha’ exercise but rather an exercise to improve the science,” said Drew Nelson, manager of the Environmental Defense Fund ‘s climate and energy program. Continue Reading

How Hurricanes that Hit the Texas Coast Can Float Giant Tanks

Hurricane Ike in 2008 buckled this petroleum storage tank south of Beaumont

Courtesy Beaumont Enterprise

Hurricane Ike in 2008 buckled this petroleum storage tank south of Beaumont

Research engineers say they’re finding that giant storage tanks for petrochemicals and petroleum are vulnerable to damage from tropical storms despite the tanks’ massive size and steel construction. The researchers found multiple cases of flood waters and high winds causing the tanks to float, buckle and rupture.

What the scientists say they didn’t find were regulations to minimize the risk in areas where “storm surge” waters are a threat.

“Overall we don’t see a wealth of any mandated provisions for considering surge or wave loads or external pressures from hurricane events,” said Jamie Padgett speaking at conference held recently in Houston by Rice University’s hurricane research center. Continue Reading

The Father of Environmental Justice Sees Danger in How Texas Regulates

As oil and gas production and processing increases, who wins and who loses in Texas?

Dave Fehling / StateImpact

As oil and gas production and processing increases, who wins and who loses in Texas?

Texas Land Commission Jerry Patterson told a political luncheon in Houston that “oppressive federal government regulation” was a big threat to the Texas energy economy. Especially pollution regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“And more specifically, (by) the U.S. Wildlife Service and their Endangered Species designations for critters that probably ought to die anyway,” Patterson said, referring to federal efforts to protect species including salamanders, lizards and prairie chickens. The designations could restrict oil & gas drilling in West Texas.

Come to Texas

It’s an anti-regulation stance repeated by the state’s top officials including Governor Rick Perry. Perry has used radio ads to try to lure businesses from other states to Texas where he said there is “limited government” and a “pro-business environment.”

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