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.
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
An updated review of the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was released by the State Department today. The pipeline will take heavy oil harvested from tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The final environmental impact review finds that the pipeline will have an impact on the climate, but a limited one, because tar sands oil will be extracted regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built.
The pipeline, a project of the Canadian company TransCanada, has become a political football over the last few years: Republicans have attacked the President for delaying it; environmental groups say approval of the pipeline and development of tar sands means “game over” for climate change.
But drawing a line in the tar sands on this one pipeline could ignore the larger reality: the report notes that heavy oil in Canada is already being extracted, and likely to make it to the market one way or another. “Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed [Keystone XL pipeline], is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States,” the State Department report says. Continue Reading →
Workers prepare a fence with Super Bowl ads at the Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, January 28, 2014. The stadium's solar panels are visible on the roof.
Sunday’s big game will be notable for being the first “Mass Transit” Super Bowl: you can’t take a cab or a limo, and parking passes are extremely limited and expensive. If you want to get to the game, you’re likely going to be taking a train or the bus. It’s also a greener super bowl because of composting, tree plantings and biofuels. And on top of all that, MetLife Stadium will have some help from the sun.
Over a thousand solar panels will generate electricity for nearly 1,000 LED lights at the game, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). While solar power isn’t nearly enough to take care of a stadium’s energy needs during a game, it still makes a difference, according to Dale Sweetnam with the EIA. “These onsite energy systems can help reduce the amount of electricity pulled from the local distribution grid,” Sweetnam writes. “When stadiums are not in use, their PV systems can feed electricity into the local grid.” Continue Reading →
For years, Texas has struggled with how to solve its energy crunch: forecasts said not enough power plants were being built to meet the demands of a growing population and a booming state. But it turns out the state’s supplies are likely adequate. Despite all the growth in Texas, peak power demand hasn’t increased as fast as expected.
To understand why, it helps to start with those long, hot Texas summer afternoons just six months ago.
“Our electricity problems in Texas are almost entirely because of air conditioning in the afternoons in the summer,” said Michael Webber, Deputy Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. “In fact, in the whole year we have an excess of electricity, except for a few hours, in a few weeks of the year.”
That problem with the Texas electricity market isn’t unique.
“Across the nation, we have something like a trillion dollars of capital in our power plants And we use those power plants on average 42 percent of the time,” Webber said. “This is incredibly irrational.”
But what if you could shift power use? What if you could incentivize people to use less during that time of peak demand? A relatively recent development could be the answer. It’s called ‘Demand Response.’
Lynda Stokes is the mayor of Reno in Parker County, where more than 30 earthquakes have been recorded since November.
The mayor of one of the small towns at the center of Texas’ latest earthquake swarm traveled to Austin last week to speak to oil and gas regulators. While Lynda Stokes, the mayor of Reno, Texas, didn’t get any answers from the Railroad Commission of Texas (which oversees drilling in the state), she did get a chance to have her voice — along with those of many other residents from the region — heard.
“Nowhere in my wildest dreams did I believe that here in Reno, Texas, we would have earthquakes,” Stokes tells Dallas’ KERA News. Her area of Texas has seen over thirty quakes, the largest a magnitude 3.6, since November. “They feel like you’re living right next to the freeway and a big truck just came rumbling through your living room.”
KERA’s Vice President of News, Rick Holter, talked to Stokes about the quakes and what could happen next, including the possibility of a city ordinance to ban disposal wells, which are believed to be behind the quakes. Take a listen to the interview:
Stokes and others called on the Railroad Commission to immediately suspend operations at the disposal wells in the area.
Residents of the quake-stricken area called on state regulators to immediately suspend operations at the wells believed to be behind the tremors.
Dozens of residents and local officials from the towns of Azle, Reno and Springtown outside of Fort Worth bused down to Austin Tuesday to speak before state regulators about a swarm of recent earthquakes believed to be tied to the oil and gas industry. They had plenty of questions for the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, but the commission had few answers.
While the quakes have been relatively small, not big enough to cause major damage, there’s been a lot of them: more than thirty over the last few months. They’ve caused cracks in homes, sinkholes and more than a few rude awakenings.
“The quakes started recently, and I didn’t think much about it until I was asleep at midnight,” testified Springtown resident Phil Doss. “It woke me up. I thought a 747 had landed on my roof. It was that bad.”
Springtown is one of several towns in Texas that saw a sudden onset of quakes over the last few years as a drilling boom expanded throughout the state. No earthquakes struck the Dallas-Fort Worth region before 2007, according to records from the United States Geological Survey. There have been more than a hundred since. Continue Reading →
Azle Mayor Alan Brundrett has been disappointed by the Railroad Commission's refusal to provide answers or acknowledge that disposal wells have caused earthquakes elsewhere.
After dozens of quakes have rattled a small community outside of Fort Worth over the last few months, the Texas Legislature is creating a committee to look into the issue and allegations that the quakes are linked to oil and gas drilling activity.
State Representative Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, chairman of the House Energy Resources Committee, announced today the creation of a ‘Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.’ The subcommittee will be chaired by state Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, and also include Representatives Phil King (R-Weatherford ), Terry Canales (D-Edinburg), and Chris Paddie (R-Marshall).
Rep. Crownover tells StateImpact Texas the subcommittee will meet this year, likely more than once, before the full legislature convenes next year. “Texans deserve answers,” Crownover says, “We are going to be very, very careful to make sure that we follow the science and ask all the questions we need to ask. I think people have questions and no one has the answer.”
The link between manmade quakes and disposal wells in Texas and other parts of the county is well established, with several peer-reviewed studies showing that waste water from oil and gas drilling injected underground for disposal can cause faults to slip. That was the culprit behind other swarms of quakes nearby in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as well as other manmade quakes in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio.
There’s an old saying that it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But for the near future, University of Texas at Austin professor Michael Webber recently put together what he thinks will be the big stories in the year ahead for energy and the environment. At the annual Webber Energy Group research symposium earlier this month, Webber, Deputy Director of UT’s Energy Institute, noted that “predictions are often wrong,” like the current domestic drilling boom few saw coming, but there are some developing trends we may see more of this year.
Among his predictions:
Exploding Trains: As more and more oil and gas is being produced in the U.S. and Canada, infrastructure for moving that fuel around is lagging behind. While pipelines take time to be built (or face political and environmental hurdles, like the Keystone XL pipeline), the oil and gas still has to get to the market. Shipping it by rail has become the preferred Plan B of the drilling companies until pipelines come on line. But moving fuels by rail can bring considerable risk when those trains go through towns and cities, like the July crude train derailment in Quebec that killed 47 people. Webber predicts more pipelines will alleviate some of the infrastructure strain pushing fuels onto rail, but it will take time. “In the meantime, we’ll use trains,” Webber said. “And those trains will derail, crash, and explode.”
Less Flaring: More pipelines will mean less flaring, or burning off of gas, from oil wells, Webber said. Right now the Bakken Shale in North Dakota flares off 30 percent of the natural gas it produces. “There is no way the Bakken Shale gets to keep flaring” at that level, Webber said. (Texas, by comparison, flares about one percent of its natural gas.) Â With more pipelines, that gas could be captured and sold. Webber predicts that will happen as regulatory and political pressure increase on the industry to stop wasting gas. Continue Reading →
A map of recent earthquakes (in red) and oil and gas wastewater disposal wells outside of Fort Worth. Active disposal wells are in green; inactive wells are in yellow. Map by Michael Marks/Terrence Henry
UPDATE: Check back on StateImpact Texas later this morning for full coverage of last night’s event.
Residents around Eagle Mountain Lake outside of Fort Worth have had a shaky few months. Dozens of small earthquakes have struck the area out of the blue. The Dallas-Fort Worth area is not known as a place that’s prone to earthquakes. In fact, before 2007, there were no recorded earthquakes in the area. Since then, there have been hundreds.
Studies of other swarms of earthquakes to the south in Johnson County and around the Dallas-Fort Worth airport have shown disposal wells to be the culprit, where wastewater from oil and gas drilling is injected deep underground. Inject enough wastewater, at the right pressure, and it can cause quiet faults to slip, resulting in earthquakes.
“Over just five years, we’ve come from an environment where, although experts like myself knew injection could cause earthquakes, it wasn’t something on companies minds or the public’s mind,” said Cliff Frohlich,a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin, during an earlier interview. Frohlich has led much of the research into the Texas quakes.
“We’ve gone to an environment now where a lot of people are worrying about this. And over the next five years, this is going to result in a lot more knowledge about the phenomenon. And how to handle it in a responsible way,” Frorhlich said.
Two of our top stories this year looked at a new water fund for Texas.
As we ring in a new year, we’re taking a look back at some of the top stories for StateImpact Texas in 2013. From cattle rustlers to electric cars, these were the five most popular stories of the year:
Cattle Theft on The Rise in Texas, Despite Tougher Penalties: “Ranchers saw a sharp jump in cattle rustling last year in Texas and Oklahoma. Over 10,000 cows and horses were reported missing or stolen. That’s an almost 40 percent increase from the year before. It’s a trend that’s surprised some in law enforcement.”
If Proposition 6 Passes, What Comes Next for Water in Texas? Voters approved the first major spending on water project in decades this year: “If there’s one thing that is certain, it’s that Prop 6 would likely spur a burst of interest in the state water planning process, a bottom-up system in which regional groups put together proposals for their areas and then send those up to the state level for inclusion in the State Water Plan.”
After West Fertilizer Explosion, Concerns Over Safety, Regulation and Zoning: In the days after a deadly explosion that killed fifteen and destroyed dozens of homes, questions arose over what could have been done to prevent it: “Even at this early stage of the investigation, there are signs that not all was right with the plant, like the fact that it had as much as 270 tons of ammonium nitrate (which can be explosive) at the site, but no sprinklers or fire barriers. It’s also brought up questions about regulation in Texas, and whether homes and schools should be so close to industry.”
A map of recent earthquakes (in red) and oil and gas wastewater disposal wells outside of Fort Worth. Active disposal wells are in green; inactive wells are in yellow. Map by Michael Marks/Terrence Henry
Two more earthquakes struck near the town of Azle outside of Fort Worth over the weekend, both measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale. One struck late Sunday morning, the other Monday morning. The area, in Parker and Tarrant counties, has seen a swarm of over twenty quakes since the beginning of November, troubling residents and causing minor damage to some homes.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is not known as a seismically active area. Before 2007, there were no recorded earthquakes in the area. Since that time, there have been hundreds.
The quakes are thought to be linked to the disposal of wastewater, a byproduct of oil and gas drilling. Peer-reviewed scientific studies of other swarms of quakes to the south in Johnson County and around the Dallas-Fort Worth airport have pointed the finger directly at disposal wells, where that wastewater is sent deep underground. Quakes in other states like Oklahoma, Ohio and Arkansas also have been scientifically linked to oil and gas wastewater disposal wells. The science behind the phenomenon has been known since the 1960s.
Now, the manmade quakes finally appear to have gotten the attention of Texas’ oil and gas regulator, the Railroad Commission of Texas.
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