This evening StateImpact Texas received a response from BP about reported leaks of sulfur dioxide and methyl mercaptan at their refinery in Texas City, Texas. The BP Texas City refinery is the third largest refinery in the US, according to the company, and refines three percent of the country’s gasoline.
Here is the full statement:
“BP Texas City continues to address an odor event that occurred Tuesday evening at its Texas City Refinery.
The source of the odor was mercaptan, the odor additive placed in natural gas, which is used because of its strong odor at very low concentrations.
The site dispatched and is maintaining mobile environmental monitors into the community.
Workers sift through debris at the BP facility in Texas City 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Houston, 24 March 2005, after an explosion that killed 15.
Earlier this week there were reports of a leak at the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas, just outside of Galveston. Sulfur dioxide (a pollutant regulated by the EPA and linked to respiratory issues) reportedly escaped the plant.
A caller reported the sulfur dioxide leak Monday to the National Response Center, the federal division for reporting oil and chemical spills. “Caller is concerned about the health of the residents located near the refinery,” the incident report logging the call says. (You can read the report below.) Under a category for “Environmental Impact,” the report says “UNKNOWN.” The field for “Community Impact due to Material” is simply left blank, and under the category of “Media Interest” it states: “NONE.”
It could be that the report was submitted by someone working at the refinery itself, as it says that the caller encouraged “agencies to call him to direct them where exactly the leak is at the refinery.” [UPDATE: BP says the report was not made by anyone at the company and that no sulfur dioxide leaked from the plant. Read the full response from BP.] Continue Reading →
Oil and gas exploration is up in the state of Texas. Over 100,000 new wells were drilled in the last five years, some of them hydraulic fracturing operations looking for “tight oil” and shale gas trapped in layers of rock far below the surface. So while business booms and holes are being drilled into the ground left and right, who’s regulating the industry?
Oil and gas drilling in Texas is under the watch of the Railroad Commission of Texas, an elected panel of three commissioners. They monitor and permit wells, and are charged with enforcing violations. A report today by Greenwire analyzes the Railroad Commission’s enforcement and regulation of drilling, and finds it “unfocused and lax”. Continue Reading →
A weed grows out of the dry cracked bed of O.C. Fisher Lake on July 25, 2011 in San Angelo, Texas.
It’s a question on everyone’s mind, one with an elusive answer – when will the drought end? John Nielsen-Gammon, the state’s climatologist, has been busy briefing lawmakers on how we got here, if there’s an end in sight, and whether or not this may be the new normal. Using his report that he presented last week to the Texas State Legislature, The 2011 Drought, below, here are ten things you should know about the Texas drought:
How bad is it? The current drought “has been the most intense one-year drought in Texas since at least 1895 when statewide weather records begin, and… it probably already ranks among the five worst droughts overall.” Continue Reading →
Green industries promise new jobs but Texas is still dominated by traditional energy.
Federal funds would be better spent on traditional jobs rather than those in “green energy” businesses, according to economists with the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology.
“We looked as objectively as we could,” said Michelle Foss, Chief Energy Economist with the Bureau. “And for quite a long time, for the foreseeable future, (Texas) would be losing more than gaining from any policy that caused a diversion of investment away from our traditional energy businesses and towards green energy businesses.”
Much of the attention to the potential dangers of oil and gas exploration, especially in hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”), has focused on the environmental impact it may have. Will it cause earthquakes? Can it pollute the water? Does natural gas have a bigger carbon footprint than coal?
But a new study from the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), a federal agency that investigates chemical accidents, demonstrates another, less obvious danger: teenagers.
Children and young adults frequently socialize at oil sites in rural areas, unaware of the explosion hazards from storage tanks that contain flammable hydrocarbons like crude oil and natural gas condensate. The unintentional introduction of an ignition source (such as a match, lighter, cigarette, or static electricity) near tank hatches or vents can trigger an internal tank explosion, often launching the tank into the air and killing or injuring people nearby.
Last year in the rural community of New London, Texas, an M-C Production oil tank exploded when a cigarette was lit by a couple in their mid-twenties. The exploding tank flew 48 feet away, killing the woman and seriously injuring her companion. An investigation by the CSB revealed that “at the time of the explosion the oil site had no fences or hatch locks, nor were the tanks designed to reduce the potential of an internal explosion.” Continue Reading →
That’s a direct quote from Andy Saenz, spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). He’s referring to an article on rising sea levels by Rice University Professor John Anderson that was supposed to be part of a larger report on the Galveston Bay, “State of the Bay 2010,” by the TCEQ.
So what was wrong with the article in question, according to the TCEQ? You can read it right here, with notable deletions by the commission of phrases such as “due mainly to direct human intervention” and “impacts of global climate change:”
So the TCEQ didn’t like these references to human impact and climate change. Anderson, the Rice Professor, didn’t appreciate their efforts to delete them, so he leaked the article to reporters. This led to the TCEQ removing the article entirely:
Commission spokesman Andy Saenz said Anderson prematurely revealed the draft report to the media without prior approval, and that the commission did not want to include controversial implications about global warming in the report.
Two co-editors of the project, Jim Lester and Lisa Gonzalez, scientists with the Houston Advanced Research Center, a nonprofit research facility contracted for the report, asked the agency to remove their names, fearing their own credibility.
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