In Ector County, officials say roads like this have been used for years to dump oilfield waste, leaving lanes coated with slippery fluids.
A case of alleged dumping of possibly thousands of gallons of chemicals into Odessa’s sewer system has local officials wondering who’s supposed to police the drilling industry.
“We’re finding that there’s so much confusion in this area of law regarding who is responsible for what,” said Susan Redford, the Ector County Judge. “So in Ector County, we have taken the lead upon ourselves to investigate the more serious illegal dumping cases and to prosecute those cases both civilly and criminally.”
Just a couple of the many fungi that UT PhD student Colin Averill encounters in his work.
There is more carbon dioxide stored in the ground than in the air around us. If those all that greenhouse gas escapes, it could be catastrophic for the earth. Now, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin thinks he’s found the key that keeps much of it locked away.
It’s research that could revolutionize how we understands climate change, and potentially help us combat it, and it all has to do with a feast happening just under your feet.
Colin Averill, a PhD student in the program of Ecology Evolution and Behavior at UT Austin, says there are a handful of creatures partaking in that feast, and their competition for food regulates the flow of carbon dioxide between the soil and the atmosphere.
First, the Eaters:
Averill’s research looks at the way plants, trees, fungus and “decomposer microbes” all battle for a seat at the dinner table.
Gated gas: brick wall surrounds well site near neighborhoods on Fort Worth's east side
In some cities, behind neat brick walls and wrought iron fences, you might find rows of nice homes.
In Fort Worth, you might find a gas well.
“We’re still drilling wells. We have three sites that are actively drilling. We have 2,000 producing wells,” said Tom Edwards, a senior inspector with the City of Fort Worth’s gas drilling division.
Since the drilling surge began in 2001 and peaked in 2008, Fort Worth residents learned a lot about the energy business. It was in their backyards, parks, and near hospitals. And just like the recent revelation that ExxonMobil’s own chairman was fighting construction related to drilling near his home in a Dallas suburb, there was resistance in Fort Worth. Continue Reading →
Activists took to the trees to try to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline in East Texas.
Those who follow the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline may remember a time in 2012, when protesters began acts of civil disobedience in East Texas aimed at stopping the pipeline during construction. They chained themselves to trucks and organized a “tree sit,” putting themselves directly in the path of vehicles and machinery that were clearing forest for the pipeline.
Filmmaker John Fiege followed that group and premieres his movie “Above All Else” at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin.  Fiege makes no secret of his opposition to the pipeline, but the movie is more than a political statement. He says he wanted to chronicle the moment in time when the American environmental movement became more galvanized than it had been in decades.
Fiege sat down with StateImpact Texas to talk about the current state of environmentalism in the country, what protesters hoped to accomplish through “tree sitting,” and what the future may hold if the pipeline is ultimately approved by the Obama administration.
Charles Matthews served on the Railroad Commission of Texas from 1995 to 2005, including time as Chairman.
In an often-quoted scene from the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood, sociopathic oilman Daniel Plainview meets his rival for the last time. If oil fields are like milkshakes, he says, it pays to have a straw that reaches all the way across the room “and starts to drink your milkshake.”
This year, Texans will have the chance to vote for  a seat on the Railroad Commission of Texas. But the commission has a lot more to do with milkshakes than railroads. It regulates oil and gas in Texas.
“The commission acts like a court,” Charles Matthews explains. Matthews served on the three-member commission from 1995 to 2005, before stepping down to become Chancellor of Texas State University.
That three-person “court” often decides on disputes between oil and gas drillers, to make sure nobody drinks anyone else’s milkshake.
Trucks at a state-authorized disposal site in Frio County, Texas
Acids used for drilling oil and gas wells are safe according to the oil and gas industry, but companies have been looking for better alternatives to protect workers and the environment.
The concern over acids was highlighted this week in Pennsylvania, where there’s been a boom in drilling for natural gas. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection said it found that Halliburton Energy Services had for years failed to handle hydrochloric acid as a hazardous waste when it trucked it to an unauthorized disposal site. The state said the “acidic waste” had come from “various gas well sites.”
Larry Burns is the Emergency Coordinator for the town of Timpson, in East Texas. “If the quakes get much over a 5.0 [on the Richter scale], then we suspect we’ll have some damage. It could be anything from broken lines, broken mains to a water tower on the ground.”
Cliff Frohlich of UT Austin has studied the quakes. “It’s like smoking and lung cancer,” Frohlich says. “Some people smoke and never get lung cancer. Some people get lung cancer and don’t smoke. And that’s sort of the situation with injection wells.”
The water tower in Timpson wasn’t build to withstand earthquakes. “After 4.0 [on the Richter scale], we get pretty nervous,” says Debra Smith, the mayor. “We have buildings in town that are over a hundred years old.”
One of the disposal wells outside of Timpson. Oil and gas drilling wastewater is sent into this well that goes nearly two miles underground.
Disposal wells like this one are the point where a small operation could turn out to be causing big tremors that can be felt miles away.
The Gator Services disposal well outside of Timpson in East Texas.
On a busy day, several tanker trucks will pull up and unload wastewater from fracking and drilling.
The North Texas towns of Reno and Azle have seen over thirty earthquakes since November, sometimes more than one a day. It’s been unsettling for residents like Barbara Brown.
“Damage to my home, sinkholes on my property. Nerves! And a lot of angst,” she said. “Because you just don’t know when they’re going to happen again.”
And it’s not the only town in the state that’s been hit with tremors. Texas has seen the number of recorded earthquakes increase tenfold since the drilling boom began several years ago. While studies have linked the quakes to oil and gas drilling activities, but state regulators and politicians say the science is far from settled.
So what does the science really say? Take a listen to the radio story:
Acid solutions are trucked to drill sites and injected deep underground
Read about the history of oil drilling in Texas and you’ll find references to how wildcatters would pour barrels of hydrochloric acid into their wells. The acid would eat through underground rock formations and allow more oil to flow up the well.
That was decades ago. While a lot has changed in the drilling industry since then, using acid has not. It’s only gotten bigger. And in Texas, no one seems to have any idea of just how much hydrochloric, acetic, or hydrofluoric acid is being pumped into the ground.
“During my years with Shell, we did not have to go to the Railroad Commission [the state oil and gas regulator] to get approval for an acid job,” said Joe Dunn Clegg, a retired engineer who now teaches at the University of Houston. In his well drilling class, you’ll learn all about what the oil and gas industry calls acidizing.
Scientists study the make up of stalactites and stalagmites to learn about ancient climate trends.
Banner (right) and researcher Barbara Wortham.
This mirror like pool of water was dry during the great Texas drought of 2011.
Formations like these tell the story of the earths climate history.
Barbara Wortham recently presented new research on how to determine the age of speleothems..
Dr. Banner’s research team measures the length of time for a single drop of water to fall in this cave.
Dr. Jay Banner and Barbara Wortham in a part of the caverns closed to the public.
Barbara Wortham at the lowest part of the caves.
Rock formations.
Researchers venture off the public passages to learn carry out their work.
Paleo ‘Rain Gauges’ in Texas Caves Help Show How Our Climate is Changing
It’s easy to imagine that attitudes towards climate change would be different if everyone owned a device like the one Dr. Jay Banner showed me this winter in Georgetown, Texas. It’s a small instrument, about the size and shape of a walkie talkie, that measures carbon dioxide wherever you go.
“You can see that outside here, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 403 parts per million,” Banner says, holding it up for inspection on a frigid morning. “That’s a number we’re really worried about in our society today. Because, at the onset of the industrial revolution, we were at about 280 parts per million. We’re on our way towards doubling it.”
Scientists agree that carbon dioxide contributes to climate change. What researchers like Banner, a Professor of Geological Science at the University of Texas at Austin, want to understand is what climate change means for the world around us. That search has put him in some tight spots during his career, often deep underground, in the caves of Central Texas. Continue Reading →
Texas leases submerged coastal land for oil & gas wells and also wildlife projects
As Texas decides how it will spend millions of dollars from a multi-state agreement with BP following the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) is proposing a fee on projects that restore damaged coastal areas.
Some of the non-profit environmental and wildlife groups involved in the projects are not happy.
Nine groups including Ducks Unlimited, the Galveston Bay Foundation, and the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter met last week with GLO staff members. The groups had expressed their opposition in a letter sent this past December to Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Continue Reading →
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