Questioning the Candidates for Texas’ Oil and Gas Regulator
The Republican race for a seat opening up on the Railroad Commission of Texas has focused on issues that have little or nothing to do with the commission: abortion, gun rights, and even Obamacare. That’s because — and we’re writing this now for what seems like the hundreth time — the Railroad Commission is the state oil and gas regulator, and has nothing do with railroads.
We here at StateImpact Texas were curious what the Republican candidates had to say about the real policy issues facing the commission, as well as the candidates from other parties. So we put together a questionnaire that did just that, and every candidate save one, Republican Ryan Sitton, agreed to participate. (Despite requests to Sitton’s campaign and to a consulting firm he hired, we have not received any direct response.) The powerful commission is the only state regulatory body run by elected leaders; all other major state regulators are run by gubernatorial appointees.
But if you’re hoping to hear what most of the Republican candidates have to say about manmade earthquakes linked to drilling activity, the use of eminent domain for routing private oil and gas pipelines, or ethics reforms, you may be disappointed. While all of the Democratic, Libertarian and Green candidates responded to the questionnaire as promised, only one Republican candidate, Becky Berger, did so. The campaigns of Republicans Wayne Christian and Malachi Boyuls both agreed to answer the questionnaire, but despite being giving an extra week to do so (and follow-up emails and phone calls), they have not yet turned in their responses.
Each day this week we’ll be posting the responses we did receive from six of the nine candidates. Today’s issue? Where the candidates stand on changing the name of the commission. The commission got its start regulating railroads in the 19th century, but the railroad industry in Texas peaked in the 1930s, and the commission hasn’t had anything to with railroads since the eighties. The commission’s name was supposed to be changed as a package of reforms during the last legislative session, but under pressure from Railroad Commissioners, those reforms didn’t pass. Continue Reading →
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.
The drought has affected Texans across the state. Haskell Simon, a rice farmer in Bay City, could go without water a third year in a row.
Update: State administrative law judges recommended today a higher trigger point for cutting off water from the Highland Lakes for rice farmers this year, saying “emergency conditions exist which present an imminent threat to the public health and safety.” If adopted, these recommendations would mean there is almost no chance of most rice farmers downstream on the Lower Colorado of getting water for irrigation. This would be the third year in a row of water cutoffs for the rice farmers. Under the proposed cutoff, unless the lakes are nearly 70 percent full, water will not be sent downstream for most farmers. The lakes are currently 38 percent full.
Original Story, Feb. 13: There’s less and less water in the Highland Lakes of Central Texas these days, and the fight over who gets what’s left has laid bare the ugly politics of drought. With each passing day, it seems the comity and compassion between groups competing for the water drops in step with the falling lake levels. Now those interests will need to wait longer before regulators make a decision on giving water to farmers this year.
The story comes from the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Gilbert, who learned that Tillerson has joined his neighbors in Bartonville (a Dallas suburb) in a suit against a water tower that would be used in part for fracking and drilling operations. Tillerson (along with former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey) is actually showing up in person at town hall meetings to protest the tower. “He and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create ‘a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,’ in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing,” Gilbert reports.
More from the Wall Street Journal on Tillerson’s objections: Continue Reading →
“Texas’ air monitoring system is so flawed that the state knows almost nothing about the extent of the pollution in the Eagle Ford. Only five permanent air monitors are installed in the 20,000-square-mile region, and all are at the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.”
“Thousands of oil and gas facilities, including six of the nine production sites near the Buehrings’ house, are allowed to self-audit their emissions without reporting them to the state. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn’t even know some of these facilities exist. An internal agency document acknowledges that the rule allowing this practice “[c]annot be proven to be protective.” Continue Reading →
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.”
A car tire lays exposed in the dried lake bottom at Lake Abillene near Abilene, Texas.
Texas is a state so huge that it experiences several different climate conditions, from the subtropical Eastern half (think swamps and hurricanes) to the semiarid West (desert and snow in the winter). As such, the state must wear a variety of hats as it navigates a changing climate.
A new study from Arizona State University says that because every region has a different climate, every region experiences climate change differently. So in combating climate change, each region must come up with a different strategy.
Matei Georgescu, one of the scientists who worked on the study, says that “local decisions can play a role” in decreasing effects of urban expansion to make conditions more livable. And Texas is no exception.
As cities burst at the seams from surges in population, those cities become pollution hubs that Georgescu says will “result in about one to two degrees Celcius warming” that will spread beyond city limits. Continue Reading →
Most candidates for Railroad Commission of Texas don't recognize the link between quakes and injection wells.
Scientists have known that man can create earthquakes by injecting fluids into the ground for decades. But if you listen to the people campaigning to regulate the Texas oil and gas industry, you may think the idea was in serious dispute.
Every Republican party candidate this primary season for the Railroad Commission denies that there is a link between injection wells used to pump oil and gas waste water underground and the surge in earthquakes that have struck Texas since the current oil and gas boom got underway. (The Railroad Commission of Texas has nothing to do with railroads; it’s the state’s oil and gas regulator.)
It’s a denial that has people living in quake-prone parts of the state deeply upset.
“Are they blind?!” Lynda Stokes, the mayor of the North Texas town of Reno, says. “Except for maybe one or two, every study says that they [quakes and injection wells] are linked. How can they say that there is no correlation?
Reno is at the epicenter of the most recent swarm of quakes. She calls herself a political independent.
The report found that toxic chemicals like benzene and hydrogen sulfide are being emitted in increasing amounts in the Eagle Ford Shale area of South Texas.
“It’s as if you’d took a big oil refinery that you’d find in Houston and plopped it down in the middle of rural Karnes County, Texas,” Jim Morris, a reporter for the non-profit Center for Public Integrity, tells StateImpact Texas. The findings came from a review of state air pollution permits.
The investigation comes on the heels of an analysis, published recently in Science Magazine, that found that natural gas “production and processing” is emitting more methane than estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency. That has implications for global climate change, though the report found that methane leaks could potentially be fixed.
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:
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