Terrence Henry reports on energy and the environment for StateImpact Texas. His radio, print and television work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, The Texas Tribune, The History Channel and other outlets.
He has previously worked at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He earned a Bachelorās Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
A stream of workers leave the TXU Monticello power plant near Mt. Pleasant, Texas February 26, 2007.
Amid the continued decline in coal power in the state, Texas’ largest power generator is asking the state for permission to idle another of its coal power units this winter. And new federal regulations proposed today make it unlikely that many new coal power plants will be built in theĀ foreseeableĀ future.
Luminant, a division of the financially-troubled Energy Future Holdings, is asking operators of the Texas grid if it can suspend one unit at its Martin Lake coal plant in Northeast Texas.Ā It’s similar to another request by the company — already granted last year and again this year — to suspend two other units at the large Monticello coal power plant in the same region.
While there’s been plenty of talk over the last few years of a regulatory “War on Coal,” the culprit behind coal’s slowdown in Texas is something far different: the free market. Continue Reading →
As the fracking drilling boom continues in Texas and other states, a shift has taken place. While the beginning of the surge saw a rush for natural gas, in recent years the focus has moved to oil. And in the process, a lot of natural gas is being wasted. Billions of dollars worth, enough to power an entire nation.
When an oil well is drilled, it can also produce methane. But in drilling areas like the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, methane isn’t what drillers are after. One option is to simply vent it, releasing it directly into the atmosphere. Another is to “flare” it, combusting the methane instead. There’s enough flaring and drilling going on that you can see it from space.
“Flaring is infinitely more preferable than just venting those emissions into the atmosphere,” Drew Nelson, Manager of Special Projects for the Environmental Defense Fund, says. “Methane is much potent than carbon dioxide.” If methane were released directly in the air, it would have a much more detrimental climate effect. By burning the methane, it converts to carbon dioxide. “Which is still a greenhouse gas,” Nelson says, “but one molecule of methane is anywhere from 24 to a hundred times more potent than one molecule of carbon dioxide, depending on the time frame you’re looking at.”
A Cabot Oil and Gas natural gas drill is viewed at a hydraulic fracturing site on January 17, 2012 in Springville, Pennsylvania. A domestic drilling boom has led to concern that more methane is leaking into the atmosphere.
A new study of natural gas drilling sites out today offers mixed results on methane leakage during the drilling and production process, one issue in an ongoing debateĀ over the safety and risks involved with a new surge in domestic drilling.
Since domestic drilling for oil and natural gas has taken off with the help of techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling, a constant question has been how much methane (aka natural gas) is leaking into the atmosphere during the process. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, says Drew Nelson with the Environmental Defense Fund, who helped coordinate the study. “For every molecule of methane that is emitted into the atmosphere, that molecule has the potential to undermine and erode the benefits of natural gas compared to other fossil fuels,” Nelson says.
Increased supplies of natural gas mean less coal (which has nearly twice the greenhouse impact of gas) is being burned in the country. But if too much methane is leaking, those climate gains could be lost.
The study, authored by David Allen of the University of Texas at Austin, is unique in its methodology. While previous studies have relied on estimates or downwind measurements, Allen’s team is the first toĀ monitorĀ emissions at nearly 200 drilling sites across the country directly for a year and a half.Ā Previous studies of methane leakage had found varying rates, some as high as 8 percent. But Allen says direct access to the drilling sites themselves provided researchers with more accurate measurements. Continue Reading →
An old windmill at Monahans Sand Hills State Park.
Texas is still in a drought, and it’s to the point where reservoir levels in the state may soon reach an all-time collective low.
āIf they keep going down at the present rate, it will only take about two more weeks before they will set an all-time record for the difference between how much water they were designed to hold and how much they water they actually have in them,” state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon tells Texas A&M Agrilife this week. “We continue to set records levels for this time of year, but this will be an all-time record low.ā
While the state has seen some good rains since the long, dry summer of 2011, they haven’t been enough to fill many reservoirs back up. The state’s reservoirs are currently less than 60 percent full, according to the Texas Water Development Board.
But you can’t buy a Tesla in Texas from the dealership. You can’t even take it for a test drive. If you want to buy a Tesla in Texas, you have to order it online. (But once you do, you’ll find more and more Tesla charging stations to get you across the state.)
That’s because of state law (similar to those in many other states) that protects the franchise dealership system. Essentially, car manufacturers are not allowed to run and own dealerships. Tesla operates all of its own dealerships, however, and runs a different business model than traditional automakers and dealerships. It argued before the state legislature this past session that it deserved an exception to the rule: the state should allow it to have its own direct dealerships in Texas.
The legislation went nowhere, with lawmakers never even taking a vote. And a new report by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice tells us why: it likely comes down to money. Continue Reading →
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 toĀ theĀ Texas State HistoricalĀ Association. ButĀ 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. ButĀ 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.
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,Ā 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 →
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 AustinĀ 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]Ā Kingston and five other council members voted no ā denying the required 12 votes to approve the drilling. Mayor Mike Rawlings announced that he is personally is against gas drilling in Dallas.
āTo paraphrase Ecclesiastes there is a place for everything under heaven and I donāt think that place for gas drilling is Dallas,ā Rawlings explained. Continue Reading →
Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas at Austin.
A new study shows yet another link between oil and gas drilling and manmade earthquakes in Texas. The report, by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, says that a recent string of quakes in the Eagle Ford Shale formation of South Texas are mostly a result of oil and gas drilling.
“The question we were looking at was, were quakes in the area linked to theĀ disposalĀ of hydrofracking waste?” says Cliff Frohlich, Associate Director at UT’s Institute for Geophysics and lead author of the study.
In previous studies of earthquakes in the Barnett Shale drilling in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the science pointed to disposal wells as the culprit, where large amounts of wastewater from drilling are disposed of deep underground. In the case of South Texas, another drilling hotspot, Frohlich was expecting the same result.
But the geology and drilling history of the Eagle Ford are different, Frohlich says. Although the new study finds that some of the quakes in the area areĀ probablyĀ linked to injection disposal wells, most of them, especially the biggest ones, are linked to the extraction of oil and gas. Continue Reading →
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