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 Bachelorâs Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
Perhaps itâs a reflection of the integral role that energy plays in American life, but energy has also played a big role in Hollywood — from the oilfields in ‘Giant’ to a nuclear time machine in âBack to the Futureâ.
A new television show premiering tonight takes a closer look at the connection. Associate Professor of Engineering and Deputy Director of the Energy Institute at University of Texas at Austin Michael Webber hosts âEnergy at the Movies,â an examination of how film has reflected the energy issues of our past, present, and even future. The show airs on Central Texas public television station KLRU at 9 p.m. tonight, and you can also watch it online.
Q: When you think about movies, energy isnât the first thing that comes to mind, but you say maybe it should be.
A: Well it turns out that energy shows up in the movies in a lot of ways. It shows up as a plot line, it shows up as a background context, as a motivation for characters. And we found a couple of hundred movies that have major energy elements in them in one way or another. And if you take all these elements and stitch them together over time, you get a pretty nice historical snapshot of energy in society. Continue Reading →
The Keystone XL pipeline under construction in East Texas. The state legislature is considering plans to change how pipelines use eminent domain in the state.
The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would take heavy crude oil from sand pits in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas, is getting new scrutiny after an oil spill from another pipeline in Arkansas carrying that same kind of heavy oil.
Environmental groups say that allowing the Keystone XL pipeline, owned and operated by the pipeline company TransCanada, will harm the climate and risk severe spills, while the oil industry says pipelines are the safest way to move the fuel, and that oil will help the economy and national security. The Presidentâs getting pressure from both sides to decide whether or not to allow the pipeline to cross the Canadian border. But with our without presidential approval, the Keystone XL pipeline is coming to Texas, where it has brought another issue into the spotlight: property rights in an industry-friendly state. Continue Reading →
The bottom of the lake after the water has dried up at the Benbrook Lake Dock in Benbrook, Texas, near the peak of the drought in August 2011.
While there are different routes proposed to get there, one goal is clear this legislative session: lawmakers want to do something to address the state’s water woes. Texas faces shrinking water supplies, persistent drought and a growing population. One major initiative that would likely take $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to start financing new water projects in the state had a hearing today at the State Senate Natural Resources Committee.
Representatives of farmers, environmentalists and conservative groups all had their say on that proposal, HB 4, by Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland. And for the most part, the plan has widespread support. âIâm getting a little bit worried because the comments by the Texas Farm Bureau sound like the rationale Sierra Club has for supporting this bill,â joked Ken Kramer, Water Resources Chair & Legislative Advisor for the Lone Star Sierra Club, who testified in favor of the bill.
The plan would create a revolving bank, the State Water Implementation Fund of Texas (SWIFT), that would review and approve loans for water projects, things like new reservoirs, brackish desalination and conservation. The loans would be repaid into the bank, which would then use the money for other new projects. 20 percent of the funding would be dedicated to conservation projects, while 10 percent would be directed towards rural areas.
At this point, the only real opposition to the water funding comes from some fiscal conservative groups, who argue that state spending and oversight is largely unnecessary. Continue Reading →
A new surprise plan from the Texas Senate would take big decisions about funding for water and roads and put them in the hands of voters.
Water and roads are hot topics at the Texas legislature this session, as for the first time in several sessions, lawmakers make real efforts to fund new water and road projects for the growing state. While there seems to be a broad consensus that significant new funding is needed; as expected, it’s in the particulars where differences are emerging.
If a new Senate proposal ultimately passes, the large allocation of state dollars for water and roads would now be decided by the voters.
A plan already making its way through the legislature would create a revolving state water bank, backed by $2 billion from the Rainy Day Fund (basically the state’s bonus savings account) and an additional $6 billion in bond authority. That recently passed in the House and is now in the Senate, HB 4. But the actual funds for that bill are found in another bill, HB 11, which has yet to hit the floor. (A similar scenario is at play in the Senate.)
But late yesterday, in a surprise move, State Sen. Tommy Williams, R-Woodlands, introduced a different plan for the funds for the water bank, which would send the spending approval to voters. It’s in Senate Joint Resolution 1, with a price tag of $2.5 billion for water, and another $3.5 billion in transportation funding. Voters would decide on each allocation separately. They quickly held a hearing on it this morning in the Senate Finance Committee. Continue Reading →
An aging tractor shares land with a oil drilling rig at a farm above the Niobrara oil shale formation in Weld County, Northeastern Colorado on May 30, 2012.
The latest University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll finds that a plurality of Americans oppose exporting natural gas; a majority say climate change is occurring; and in general are more concerned about the prices of gasoline and electricity than they are about carbon emissions.
The semi-annual poll, conducted online, asks a representative group of 2,000 Americans (based on Census data) how they think and feel about the energy issues of our time. This is the fourth wave of the poll, which began in 2011. Sheril Kirshenbaum, the poll’s director, says that political leanings seem to influence how Americans see energy. “There seem to be very strong differences between Democrats and Republicans,” Kirshenbaum says. “It’s coming to the point where if I know what your party affiliation is, I can usually guess where you fall on a lot of these topics.”
Democrats in the poll, for instance, tend to trust the scientific community when it comes to topics like hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” while Republicans are less likely to believe the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring.
Among the findings:
73 percent said global climate change is occurring, while only 16 percent said it isn’t. That number has held steady since the last poll, which came as a bit of a surprise to Kirshenbaum. “Normally, after the winter, whenever there’s snow around the country, we expect those numbers to go down a bit.” Continue Reading →
Carbon emissisions from power generation are down in the U.S., to their lowest levels in nearly twenty years, and Texas is partly to thank.
A new analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that “energy-related” carbon emissions have been declining every year (with the exception of 2010) since 2007. That’s when the drilling processes known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and horizontal drilling started opening up large domestic sources of natural gas and oil. Texas was the incubator for that technology, and home to the first natural gas-from-fracking boom in the Barnett Shale.
As that natural gas has become easier to drill, its price has gone down, and has been steadily replacing coal for power generation. Natural gas has about half the carbon emissions of coal, and far fewer air pollutants. It’s the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, according to the EIA. Continue Reading →
As the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has rapidly spread across Texas, so has the demand for disposal wells, where wastewater from oil and gas drilling is sent deep underground. In this new interactive map from Ryan Murphy of the Texas Tribune, you can see where more than 7,000 disposal wells are in Texas.
The wastewater from drilling consists of both the fluid used in fracking, as well as water that has been waiting underground with the oil and gas. It’s cheapest for drillers to use disposal wells to get rid of it, but Texas regulators are trying to encourage more recycling of wastewater. The wells have resulted in more truck traffic and some incidents of spills and contamination, and the amount of wastewater being disposed has risen dramatically, to nearly 3.5 billion barrels in 2011 from 46 million barrels in 2005.
Each day, dozens of trucks hook up to the Gulf Coast-run fracking fluid disposal well site near Gonzales, TX.
This article is part of an occasional series on water and hydraulic fracturing by StateImpact Texas and the Texas Tribune.
GONZALES, Tex. â In a dusty lot off the main highway in this South Texas town, Vern Sartin pointed to a collection of hose hookups and large storage tanks used for collecting wastewater from hydraulic fracturing jobs.
âWe run about 30 to 40 trucks a day, 24-7,â Sartin said. âDepending on how the oil fracking is going out there, if theyâre hustling and bustling, then weâre hustling and bustling.â
Sartin is a watchman at a disposal well operated by Gulf Coast Acquisitions, where each day oil and gas companies dispose of wastewater by pumping it deep underground.
Wastewater disposal wells like this one are becoming a common landmark in the drilling regions of Texas as the water-intensive practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, continues to spread. In the fracking process, several million gallons of water, combined with sand and chemicals, are sent down a well to break up rock and retrieve oil and gas. Some of the fluid comes back up, along with additional underground water.
Photo Illustration by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A bill to provide major funding for new water projects in Texas was passed by the House today.
The Texas House approved legislation today that would use $2 billion to fund more water projects in the state. HB 4, by Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, would create a water bank that would offer loans for projects like new water reservoirs, pipelines and conservation projects.
“As Mother Nature has reminded us in the last couple of years, we can’t change the weather,” Ritter said at the outset of the hearing, “but with sound science and far-sighted planning, we can conserve and develop supply to meet our future demands.”
The floor hearing was a significant step for the passage of the bill, but despite widespread support at the Capitol, it wasnât a sure bet. During more than four hours of debate on the bill, it faced sustained opposition from a few lawmakers, some of them affiliated with the Tea Party, whose amendments wouldâve effectively gutted the funds. They were ultimately thwarted by other Republicans.
While the boom in South Texas has brought a time of economic plenty, it's putting a hurt on roads.
You don’t have to go far from Greg Sengelmann’s office in the center of Gonzales to see something’s different about South Texas these days. “That’s the city’s RV park that we put in, to house all the [oilfield] workers out there,” he says, pointing to dozens of motorhomes parked on a grass hill outside the J.B. Wells Arena (also home to youth rodeos and vintage airstream rallies). “You’ll see probably ten other ones throughout the county.”
Sengelmann is the General Manager for the Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation, tasked with managing and protecting the area’s groundwater. As drilling rapidly expands in the Eagle Ford Shale and other parts of Texas thanks to the spread of hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) and horizontal drilling, it’s changing small towns and communities.
“I think itâs a net positive,” says Sengelmann. “I think people are mainly happy about it. Because itâs bringing in a lot of money and new activity.â
The questions are whether those changes are all for the better, and how long the money and activity will last.
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