Truck hauling tanks in Midland/Odessa hits and damages overpass
Looking for ways to pay to rebuild roads damaged by thousands of trucks servicing oil and gas drilling, the Texas legislature will likely consider raising fees for overweight trucks when it convenes in January.
“The fees we are collecting today just are not sufficient to compensate for the increased consumption of pavement and bridges,” John Barton, Assistant Executive Director for Engineering Operations with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), tells StateImpact Texas.
‘Completely Destroyed’
Consumption is one way to put it. Destroyed is another.
“With all the traffic, it’s destroying our roads. Some are already completely destroyed,” says Frio County Judge Carlos Garcia in South Texas. It’s in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale formation, where oil production from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in nearby Karnes County now leads the state.
Photo courtesy of JeffGunn via flickr's creative commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffgunn/
Lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session will be debating ways to fund a water plan that some think is not enough.
When it comes to the cost of the looming water crisis in Texas, the State Water Development Board is ready with some helpful numbers. They are generally big ones.
If the state does nothing to cope with its booming population and dwindling water supply, Texas businesses will lose $116 billion over the next 50 years. The state as a whole will lose more than 1 million jobs.
$53 billion is the price tag of the plan that the Board thinks will avert those losses and assure water security into this century. But the state has never funded the plan.
Thousands of new drilling sites mean a surge in record keeping for the state's regulators
With fracking and improved technology, oil and gas drilling is surging in parts of Texas. But the  Railroad Commission  of Texas (RRC) that regulates the industry has computers that can’t keep up.
“We have a lot of technology in our industry and the agency that oversees us needs to be up to par with us,” says Deb Hastings, Executive Vice President of the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
But it isn’t. Just ask one of the agency’s three elected commissioners, like David Porter.
“Quite frankly, that’s the biggest problem we’ve got at the Railroad Commission is our IT system,” Porter said at a conference in San Antonio recently. “And we’re probably stuck somewhere in the mid 90s as far as technology and software is concerned. Its not acceptable, we’ve got to improve that.” Continue Reading →
Water rates are rising across rural Texas, say consumer advocates.
The face of the rural Texas water provider is changing. Jim Boyle, a lawyer with the group Texas Rate Payers United, says years ago most water companies were mom and pop operations, owned by families within the communities they served. Then the great roll-up began.
“We have three or four companies that have come into Texas, one from California, one from Pennsylvania,” he recently told the Texas House Committee on County Affairs. “They’ve come to Texas and they’ve bought hundred of subdivisions systems.”
But it’s not the consolidation that ‘s the problem. According to Boyle, it’s what happens afterwards. He says the companies are raising water rates across the state. When rural customers from unincorporated parts of Texas try to challenge the rate hikes before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, they’re faced with nearly insurmountable financial roadblocks.
Poster at DUG Eagle Ford convention in San Antonio
Hearing some officials talk about the oil boom in South Texas, you’d think the streets were paved with gold.
Yet the reality is the pavement is almost gone in some spots, ripped up by thousands of heavy trucks servicing oil drilling rigs. Some county leaders say the millions of tax dollars that could help fix the damage has all gone to Austin. And now they’re fighting to reroute it back to where they say it’s sorely needed.
Texas A&M scientist Anna Armitage and mangrove shrub on Pelican Island
The other day, a team of Texas A&M researchers was comparing satellite photos of the Texas coast. As the scientists looked at the images from the past 20 years, they noticed something different: there are now a lot more mangroves. Continue Reading →
Crude oil from South Texas is loaded into tank cars bound for refineries on the Gulf Coast
So much crude oil is being produced in Texas and North Dakota that within the next couple of years, refineries on the Gulf Coast may no longer need to import any light crude. In fact, according to industry researchers, there may be so much light crude that the Gulf Coast could start experiencing the same bottleneck dilemma as the oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
“We’re dubbing this region the ‘Cushing Coast’. We see a region in super-abundance of crude oil but with a real lack of pipeline capacity out and beyond the region,” says Greg Haas, research manager at Hart Energy, an oil industry publisher in Houston.
“We have this regional glut of crude cascading from Cushing, the inland areas, all hitting the shore,” says Haas. Continue Reading →
After losing electrical power, the TPC petrochemical plant in Houston flares hydrocarbons over Cesar Chavez High School
Power outages are a significant threat to petrochemical plants and refineries in Texas and have proven vexing for some facilities to reduce. The outages can wreak havoc, posing a health and safety risk to workers and to people who live near the plants.
“The sound of a (petrochemical plant) losing electrical power produces a sinking feeling in your stomach. It is a loss of resonance and vibration that is odd and unmistakable,” wrote Donald Schneider, a chemical engineer in League City, Texas. Continue Reading →
It remains to be seen how recent state supreme court decisions about property rights will be handled in the Texas legislature.
Today in a Beaumont courthouse, Jefferson County Judge Tom Rugg will hear yet another case concerning the Keystone XL pipeline. As we’ve reported, the Canadian company TransCanada has visited a few Texas courthouses lately. Always at issue is whether it can take private property in Texas to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
And Judge Rugg expects we’ll see more pipeline companies visiting more Texas courthouses in the future.
By all estimations, the Denbury Green ruling on eminent domain by the Texas Supreme Court means nobody is quite sure where private property rights end, and a company’s right to take property begins.
“It’s opened up a real can of worms and I’m not sure how it’s gonna get resolved,” Judge Rugg tells StateImpact Texas.
But that doesn’t mean state lawmakers won’t try in the coming legislative session.
The City of Houston produced this video showing how to spot a terrorist
(Updated October 5, 2012) As part of his work as a community organizer for environmental causes, Juan Parras takes photos of refineries and petrochemical plants near the Houston Ship Channel. Sometimes, he says he’s made to feel like a criminal for doing it.Â
“It’s making it seem like you’re committing a crime by taking a picture. And when we get to the point where we can’t take pictures of facilities because they feel threatened, then I think we’re crossing the line,” Parras tells StateImpact Texas.
Parras guesses he’s been stopped and questioned by police outside the big plants no less than ten times since 9/11.
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