Growing up on Long Island in New York, Diana Davids Hinton never thought much about oil drilling. “The closest we got to oil and gas was the local Exxon station,” she says.
But upon moving to the Midland-Odessa area in 1973, “I learned it sure wasn’t easy to do 19th-century British history in the middle of Texas,” said Hinton, whowrote her dissertation on the seventh Earl of Carlisle, a 19th-century Briton. So she made the natural move to study oil, and she found herself in the midst of one of the great boom-and-bust cycles of all time.
As a history professor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, she has co-written two books on the colorful history of Texas oil. Another one on the Barnett Shale is under contract with TCU Press and, she hopes, will be out on the shelves in two years. Yet another project on Texas’ post-World War IIpetroleum historyis also in the works.
She spoke with the Tribune about how the current boom compares to the past and how the Railroad Commission of Texas — whose name lawmakers failed to change this session — came to regulate oil in the first place.
Bastrop area landowners attended a meeting of the local groundwater conservation district on Wednesday
This story was co-reported by Andrew Weber for KUT News.
It’s easy to understand why Rick Knall would be nervous with outside businesses taking water from his neck of the woods. Knall is a property owner in Bastrop County who relies on his well.
“Our well has been a godsend it has been pumping strong good clean fresh water for a number of years,” he said at a hearing of the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District last night.
Like many others at the hearing, he worried that that steady supply could dry up with more straws in the ground. But the question of whether the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District would move ahead granting new permits had resonance beyond this Central Texas community.
“I think the whole state will be watching this,” Steve Box, with Environmental Stewardship, told StateImpact Texas ahead of the hearing.
His group opposes the permits. He and others saw the hearing as a sort of test case for the role of local groundwater districts.
At the Texas legislature, some things don’t stay dead for long. As time runs out for lawmakers to move dollars towards funding water, roads and education, it appears that for water, at least, an agreement may be in the works. Continue Reading →
While it's called the Railroad Commission of Texas, it actually deals with regulating oil and gas in the state. And a name change isn't likely to happen this session.
A name change and several ethics reforms on the table this legislative session for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees oil and gas drilling in the state, have died.
The Texas Energy Report was the first with the news, tweeting this afternoon: “RAILROAD COMMISSION SUNSET DEAD FOR THIS SESSION.”
After a lengthy review of the agency, required by state law under the Sunset review process, the Railroad Commission will continue instead with the same name and without any reforms. So what happened?
For one, there were conflicting ideas on how to reform the commission. A more industry-friendly plan in the House, HB 2166 by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, which ended up being stripped of many of its reforms (and ultimately a name change) didn’t ever make it out of the House.
A plan from the Texas Senate would take big decisions about funding for water and roads and put them in the hands of voters.
There’s a new push at the State Capital to pull $2 Billion dollars from Texas’ Rainy Day Fund and put it towards water projects. After a recent move in the House died on the floor in dramatic fashion two weeks ago, there were real questions on whether the water plan would get funded this legislative session. Today, backers of that plan got a glimmer of hope, while opponents are concerned the state could end up spending more than it should.
The new idea is to use a resolution already passed in the state Senate, SJR 1, where lawmakers would vote to set aside two billion dollars from the rainy day fund for water. But it would put the decision to create a dedicated account for water projects to voters statewide.
“The $2 billion dollars doesn’t go into the fund unless the fund is created by the voters,” says House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts.
Why so complicated? Doing it like this, lawmakers may see a way to fund water projects without voting to break the state-mandated spending cap. That was something many Republicans were loathe to do. Continue Reading →
It’s been a good month or two for the luxury electric car manufacturer Tesla: the company just posted its first profitable quarter; it’s stock is soaring and Consumer Reports just rated the Tesla S the best car it’s ever tested. But one item on the company’s wishlist increasingly looks like it won’t be coming true: owning and operating its own dealerships in Texas.
In Texas, as in many other states, cars can only be sold through the franchise dealership system: manufacturers are not allowed to own their own dealerships. In Texas, Tesla can’t legally have dealerships, only “stores” where you can’t take a test drive, can’t find out the price of the car, and can’t purchase a Tesla. It’s a system that’s been on the books for decades, but Tesla argued before state lawmakers this session that they’re different and should be exempted from the existing rules. Because they would only sell a small number of cars, they argued, and because they don’t have the service operations of a typical dealership (tiny motor with many fewer parts = less maintenance), Tesla argued before the state legislature that state law should be changed in their favor. (Meanwhile, North Carolina’s legislature is considering banning Tesla sales — even online — entirely.)
But that appears difficult at this point in the session. With just thirteen days to go, several deadlines have come and gone without a victory for Tesla. Continue Reading →
Lone Camp Volunteer Fire Department chief Charlie Sims leads his crew while fighting a wildfire on September 1, 2011 in Graford, Texas.
First, the good news for Texas.
Most of the state is not expected to be at an “above average” risk for wildfires this summer, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The reason for that might depress you: in parts of the state with less vegetation, like West Texas, years of drought and fire mean there’s little left to burn.
“That was part of the reason why some of the fire activity this past winter spring was down from last year,” Tom Spencer head of predictive services with the Texas Forest Service, tells StateImpact Texas.
Spencer said wooded parts of the state like the Hill Country and the Piney Woods are at greater risk of fire. Continue Reading →
Matt Stamey Staff photographer, Gainesville Sun /Landov
Several bills pertaining to water, the environment and public policy will be discussed at the Texas Capitol this week.
In the gauntlet that is the Texas Legislature, the bills that have made it this far are looking at the final few obstacles in the way of becoming law.
StateImpact Texas has compiled a short list of bills pertaining to water, the environment and energy that could be heard by House and Senate this week.
HB 788Â by Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, would put the job of permitting greenhouse gas emissions into the hands of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Permitting is currently done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Proponents of the bill, namely oil and gas interests, say the TCEQ could issue permits more quickly and alleviate the bottleneck of projects. Opponents the bill, like the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, say the legislation takes out contested case hearings that allow regular citizens to voice their opposition to certain projects. The bill has already passed the House, and was placed on the Senate calendar Monday for a second reading. Continue Reading →
Plants handling dangerous chemicals work with communities through Local Emergency Planning Committees
The fertilizer explosion last month that killed 14 people — mostly firefighters — in the town of West is an example of the danger of using or storing large quantities of chemicals close to communities.
Another example came just last week when hydrogen chloride gas used for processing cottonseed leaked and caused the evacuation of residents in Lubbock.
For yet another example, you can look back 38 years to what happened in another small town in Texas.
A Cloud that Killed
In Denver City, a town of 4,500 south of Lubbock, Jack Watkins is now retired. But in 1975, he was working in the oil and gas drilling industry. He was also a volunteer firefighter.
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning in February that year, the fire department was called out to investigate reports of a gas cloud just outside town. What they found left Watkins with memories still vivid to this day. Continue Reading →
The Texas House passed several bills this week that could affect Texas' water and how it is used.
The flow of water legislation continued this week as the House passed several bills that could affect one of Texas’ dearest natural resources. Thursday was the deadline for most bills originating in the House to come to floor for a vote. (The Senate has some more time, however.)
StateImpact Texas compiled a short list of some notable water bills that were passed out of the House and now head to the Senate for consideration.
However, one bill that would have put big money towards water projects in Texas is notably absent from the list. HB 11, by state Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, a landmark piece of water legislation that would have used $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to finance water projects across Texas, was sunk last week.
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