Death has been stalking the Pronghorn of West Texas Their numbers have dropped dramatically in the last five years, leaving people wondering if the species will continue in the region.
If you think pronghorn don’t hold an iconic place in the story of the old west, consider the lyrics to the tune Home on the Range. Remember, “where the deer and the antelope play?”
Those “antelope” you’ve heard about your whole life weren’t really antelope at all. They were pronghorn.
The confusion started with European settlers who mistook them for the old world species. In fact, the pronghorn is a uniquely American creature. The the fastest land mammals in the Western Hemisphere, they are the second fastest in the world after the cheetah. They evolved that way to out run a long-extinct species of North American Cheetah.
Pronghorn once roamed Texas from the Hill Country all the way to the state’s western tip. Today, though they still maintain healthy populations in many parts of the Midwest, their range in Texas is diminished to the point of disappearing.
Texaco Inc. Photograph Collection, Courtesy Sam Houston Regional Library, Liberty, TX
The early days of drilling in East Texas but does anyone know where all the wells are now?
Scattered across the oil and gas fields of Texas where fortunes have been won and sometimes lost, there are at least 7,869 abandoned wells. The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) which regulates drilling calls them orphans.
By the RRC’s count, there are an additional 5,445 wells that are inactive and whose operators are delinquent in meeting regulations. Add to all that an unknown number of orphan wells drilled decades ago for which records have been lost, if they ever existed.
You can find some of the orphans in the South Liberty Oil field in Liberty County. It’s just 45 miles east of Spindletop, the iconic oil field in Beaumont that a century ago was the most productive in the world.
And now, two years later, what’s been the impact on the Texas?
“Well, I think the impact to the Texas coastline so far as I have read about it has been minimal. The oil went primarily the other way,” says Dr. Paul Bommer, a professor at the University of Texas. He was on a national panel of engineers that looked at the causes of the spill.
“It went to Louisiana,” he says. “Some went as far away as the Florida panhandle. But a lot of it appears to have been dispersed.” Continue Reading →
The proposed pipeline has become a political issue in both states and on national campaign stages, where it’s used to underscore energy policies of both President Barack Obama and his Republican challengers. The Keystone XL pipeline also highlights economic and environmental policy differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Texas politicians love giving lip service to the sanctity of private property. They also talk a lot about the benefits of the state’s robust oil and gas industry. But what happens when those two things come into conflict?
TransCanada wants to seize land to construct part of a pipeline over Julia Trigg Crawford's farm in Lamar County, Texas.
Texas politicians love giving lip service to the sanctity of private property. They also talk a lot about the benefits of the state’s robust oil and gas industry. But what happens when those two things come into conflict?
Some run for the hills, some pick sides, and sometimes laws are changed. Continue Reading →
Julia Trigg Crawford has several hundred acres of land in northeast Texas. And the Keystone XL pipeline may have to go through it.
The Keystone XL pipeline will go through 17 counties in Texas, crossing the property of 850 landowners. And not all of them are happy about it.
High on that list is David Daniel, a carpenter in Winnsboro, north of Tyler. He bought twenty acres of land here about six years ago and moved out with his wife and daughter. Their land is lush with hundred-year-old hardwoods, and lots of fresh water that bubbles up in springs and seeps.
This is the second of a four-part collaborative series by StateImpact Texas and Oklahoma on the economic and environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline. You can read part one of our series on the Keystone XL pipeline here.
The United States loves crude from Canada. No other single foreign country is now providing more imported oil to the U.S. But with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline has come the claim that the crude from north of the border is uniquely risky.
Last June in Washington, the House Energy and Power Subcommittee questioned a federal regulator about whether pipelines in the United States were built to handle the kind of crude coming from Canada, diluted bitumen.
“Were your regulations developed with the properties of diluted bitumen in mind?” asked Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California. Continue Reading →
A worker sprays paint on a oil storage tank in the Enbridge Energy lot at the Cushing tank farm.
This is the first of a four-part collaborative series by StateImpact Texas and Oklahoma on the economic and environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Oklahoma is in an unlikely economic predicament: It has too much oil.
A cow that perished on a ranch outside of Marfa was dried "like jerky" by the drought.
Driving a pickup through a ranch outside of Marfa, Texas last week, grad students Justin Hoffman and John Edwards came across a sight sadly common for their region in far West Texas. A cow that had perished in the field.
What was strange about the grisly discovery was the condition of the body. After months in the elements, the animal still looked very nearly intact. The arid weather had dried its skin and organs “like jerky,” says Edwards. He gave its side a knock with his fist, the hollow drum-like thud illustrating his point.
For many Texans who came close to forgetting what rain looked like, this past winter was a welcome surprise. Unusually-wet weather helped Central and East Texas crawl their way out of last years historic drought. But the same can’t be said for the Trans-Pecos region, the far western point of the state, where the drought persists unabated. Continue Reading →
Volunteers count mussels in Lake Arrowhead State Park in North Texas
You may have had mussels steamed in a bit of white wine and butter. But they most likely weren’t mussels from rivers or creeks in Texas.
“Their favorite food is bacteria. They are filter-feeders, the vacuum cleaners of the river systems,” said Marsha May, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
“They’re taking in all kinds of things that can be found in streams and rivers. And so they could be toxic,” cautioned May.
Not exactly appetizing. And maybe worse is what it says about the state of those Texas waterways.
“(Mussels) are an organism we consider a biological indicator of the health of the system,” said May.”Once the mussels start going, other organisms are going to follow.”
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