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 Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
As Dallas debates how to regulate fracking within city limits, a new report sheds light on what exactly could be used to drill deep underground.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” involves sending an awful lot of stuff into the ground. A new report by the Dallas Morning News examines just how much stuff is needed, and what exactly is in it.
Dallas’ City Council is currently considering regulation of fracking within city limits, so the Morning News decided to learn what they could about what kind of “stuff” would be sent underground. The paper’s environmental writer, Randy Lee Loftis, looks at one well in Dallas County, owned and operated by Chesapeake Energy, one of the country’s biggest drillers. The company had voluntarily disclosed much of what it used to frack the well last August, ahead of a new law passed by the Texas legislature mandating such disclosures.
So what did they find? It took 38 million pounds of stuff to frack the well and release the gas trapped deep below.
Most of that (32 million pounds, or nearly four million gallons) was water. A lot of it, close to four million pounds of the mix, was sand. Water and sand made up roughly 95 percent of the materials used to frack the well.
Then there are the chemicals, as much as 55,000 pounds of them: Continue Reading →
This map Map shows earthquake epicenters examined in the study (red circles), injection wells (squares and + symbols) in use since October 2006, seismic monitoring stations (white triangles), and mapped faults (green lines).
If you live in the Barnett Shale around Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, you may have noticed the ground has become a bit shakier in the last few years. And a new study by a Univeristy of Texas seismologist says that the wells used to dispose of fracking waste water are responsible. What’s more, there have been more than eight times as many earthquakes in the area than previously thought.
The rapid expanse of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has also led to an increase in the number of wells needed to dispose of the water used in the drilling process. (Fracking is a drilling process that uses a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to fracture rock formations deep underground for oil and gas.) Once that waste water comes back up the well, it has to be disposed of, so drillers inject it into deep wells underground, as deep as 13,000 feet below the surface in the Barnett Shale.
The seismologist uses the analogy of an air hockey table to describe what’s going on. If the air is turned off, the puck won’t move even if you push it. But when you pump in the air, it moves easily. With disposal wells sending fracking waste water deep underground, liquid and pressure are migrating into a “stuck” fault. “It wants to move but it can’t,” Frohlich tells StateImpact Texas. “Until you pump fluids in there and it slips.” Over 6 millions gallons of fracking waste water a month was pumped into each of the wells near the epicenters examined in the study.
In a new story on a metal refining plant in Freeport, a reporter for Texas Observer finds repeated environmental and regulatory offenses.
Cooked books, pollution controls cobbled together with duct tape, and holes burned in the ceiling by ammonia and chloride. A furnace design from the 1800s. Arsenic and nickel sent into the air, less than a mile away from an elementary school. Pollutants pumped into the Brazos River. Those are just a few of the problems found over time at the Gulf Chemical plant in Freeport, Texas.
“An Observer review of thousands of pages of court records and internal agency documents, and interviews with a former company executive reveals a company that operated outside the law for almost four decades, even as citizens, activists and TCEQ’s own investigators pleaded for action. The records and interviews show a facility that held its pollution control equipment together with duct tape and routinely pumped out hazardous metals including nickel, vanadium, and molybdenum in quantities considered potentially harmful to nearby neighborhoods and an elementary school less than a mile from the plant. A former Gulf executive and a former TCEQ official described to the Observer how the company blatantly polluted for years and got away with it.”
Now the company is being pursued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and state Attorney General, but some feel they aren’t doing enough. Wilder also reports that “the company has missed a deadline for putting a system in place to monitor its stacks’ emissions in real-time.” It’s an important story, one that speaks to many of the issues surrounding refining and regulation in Texas.
A unit at a major coal power plant shut down yesterday, causing concern at the Texas grid.
Welcome to August, the month when we all keep a close eye on the Texas electrical grid. And it can be a difficult thing to keep an eye on.
For instance, we temporarily lost up to 750 megawatts of power yesterday when a unit of Luminant’s Martin Lake coal-fired power plant shut down in Northeast Texas. That’s enough power for 150,000 Texas homes at times of peak demand, and it comes at a time when the grid is already breaking monthly records for demand.
But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state’s grid, wouldn’t confirm a short report in Reuters today about the shutdown. “We can’t comment on specific units,” Robbie Searcy, a spokesperson for ERCOT says. But more generally, Searcy does confirm that several units were “on forced outage yesterday.”
There’s no easy way for the public to know when power plants have shutdowns. We just tried to learn more about the Luminant shutdown. But like a game of musical chairs starring your favorite acronyms, ERCOT suggested calling the PUC (Public Utility Commission). And the PUC, in turn, said to call the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality). Guess who the TCEQ said to call? ERCOT and the PUC. Continue Reading →
As things heat up in Texas, everyone's wondering where more power is going to come from.
Everyone’s wondering where Texas is going to get more power.
On Tuesday, Texas hit another record. The grid became stretched, as the heat index rose and air conditioners worked overtime. And before long electric demand hit a record for the month of July, peaking at 65,790 megawatts. (To put that into perspective, one megawatt is enough to power some 200 homes in the state during times of peak demand, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages the state’s grid.)
And the previous month was no different. On June 25, the grid hit record demand for that month. Then it broke that record the next day. That’s more than the previous record last year, which happened to be our hottest summer ever. And as this week is expected to get hotter, ERCOT is asking consumers to cut back on energy use during the late afternoon and early evening.
What’s going on? Well, to boil it down, we have more people and less power.
So why aren’t we building any new power plants? There’s a common answer: energy companies don’t want to build new power plants because fuel prices are too low. They can’t make enough profit with natural gas prices so low to make back the big investments required to build generating plants.
Four Texas companies receiving the funding are Agrobiofuels, Green Earth Fuels of Houston, Element markets, and White Energy. White Energy produces ethanol from wheat and grain, and the other companies process animal fats and oil into usable forms of energy.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the payments will “help spur an alternative fuels industry using renewable feedstocks, and help create an economy built to last.” So how much money will the companies be getting, and will it affect food prices?
Solar panels cover the roof of a Sam's Club store that was one of Wal Mart's earlier solar installations in April 2009 in Glendora, California.
It’s where you might go for pool noodles, school supplies and perhaps just people-watching. But the retail behemoth Walmart is also becoming known as a green energy company.
On Monday, Walmart unveiled its 100th solar panel array for a store in San Diego. The company has the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy to power its stores, and the San Diego project is only the latest in a long line of solar initiatives at Walmart stores in California, expected to provide 10 to 30 percent of the retail outlets’ energy needs. And the company has solar arrays installed at stores in Arizona and Puerto Rico. Walmart’s green energy initiatives put it ahead of other like-minded companies like IKEA and Apple, according to BusinessWeek.
So, Texas has plenty of Walmarts. And plenty of sun. But there are no solar stores here. Why?
“We’re looking to expand the program,” says Brooke Buchanan, director of sustainability communications at Walmart. “And Texas is on the list for consideration.” The company aims to have 1,000 locations using solar power by 2020.
Barry Smitherman won the Republican primary runoff for his seat on the Railroad Commission of Texas.
There weren’t any real surprises in tonight’s Republican primary runoff for two of the seats on the Railroad Commission of Texas. That’s the state agency in charge of regulating the oil and gas industry in Texas.
Incumbent chair Barry Smitherman won another turn at his seat after beating challenger Greg Parker. In the runoff for the open seat on the commission, Christi Craddick won over State Representative Warren Chisum.
Craddick is the daughter of longtime state house figure Tom Craddick. His funds helped her win the race. Both winners of the commission seats enjoyed a wide margin in their victories. With eight percent of precincts counted, Smitherman had 62 percent of the vote to Parker’s 38 percent. And Craddick had 60 percent of the vote to Craddick’s 40.
Photos courtesy of Chisum for Texas and Craddick for Texas
Warren Chisum, left, and Christi Craddick, right, face off today in the Republican Primary runoff for Railroad Commission of Texas.
Will Texas regulators be willing to police the hand that funds them?
Polls are open today in the Republican primary runoff race for two seats on the Railroad Commission of Texas. But the commission has nothing to do with railroads and everything to do with regulating the oil and gas industry in Texas.
The race for the other seat is a bit tighter. It features Republican Warren Chisum against Republican Christi Craddick. Warren Chisum is a state representative from Pampa who chose to run for the commission instead of reelection. He’s also made a fortune in the oil and gas industry. Chisum is facing off against Christi Craddick, an oil and gas attorney and daughter of longtime state representative (and former Texas House Speaker) Tom Craddick. In the initial primary, Craddick got roughly 36 percent of the vote, while Chisum won around 27 percent. Now the two are in a runoff, and the winner will face Democratic challenger Dale Henry this fall. (Update: With over 61 percent of the vote, Craddick beat Chisum.)
As far as what they would do differently on the commission, it’s been difficult to tell the two candidates apart. Chisum and Craddick have both employed heavy bravado about keeping the federal government out of state regulation of oil and gas. Not surprisingly, contributions to both Craddick and Chisum have come from individuals and corporations involved in oil and gas, the same companies they would regulate as commissioners.
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
All that stands in the way of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline at this point are a few landowners. While the northern section of the pipeline from Canada to Oklahoma has hit some snags, the southern portion is now officially cleared to go ahead, according to the company.
TransCanada, the company behind the controversial project that would bring heavy oil harvested from sand deposits in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, announced today that it has received the final of three permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“With the permit from the Fort Worth, Texas Army Corps district added to previously received permits from the Galveston, Texas and the Tulsa, Oklahoma districts, TransCanada is now in a position to start construction of the oil pipeline in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement. The southern leg of the pipeline got a big boost in March when President Obama called for cutting “through the red tape” and making its construction a priority.
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