Photo courtesy of AgriLife Extension Service/Robert Burns / Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Despite recent rains, Texas ranchers replenish herds with caution.
Itâs been a tough couple of years for Texas ranchers, but as the rain falls, financial clouds are begining to clear.
Increased rainfall has improved conditions for livestock production after ranches were devastated in the 2011 drought. But despite the improvement, ranchers remain hesitant to start replenishing their herds, according to the latest crop and weather report from Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service.
Dr. Jason Cleere, an A&M AgriLife Extension beef cattle specialist says in the report that national droughts hit the cattle industry hard, in Texas and the country as a whole. National cowherd numbers have dropped to the smallest in 60 years. âWe hear the 3 percent nationally, but here in Texas it was a whole lot worse,â he says in the report. âIn some of the counties, it was pretty devastating.â Continue Reading →
The candidates sparred over energy and the economy at last night's debate, and fact-checkers have been busy looking into their claims.
Last night’s presidential debate saw a lot of claims and assertions about energy and environmental policy, so we sat down to sift through what the candidates are saying. It may not surprise you that there were some questionable assertions from both sides.
It’s worth noting that any policy, and energy policy in particular, doesn’t typically boil down into easy sound bites or attacks like the ones being used by both campaigns. The factors are often complex and nuanced. Take gasoline prices, for instance: the White House has little control over whether prices go up, and becoming “energy independent” isn’t likely to do much to bring them down. Oil is traded on a world market, so what happens in the Strait of Hormuz is likely to have an impact at the pump in Des Moines.
Using various fact-checks by PolitiFact, FactCheck, and the New York Times, here’s a list of some of the truths, untruths and half-truths delivered in last night’s debate:
Half-True/Half-False: Drilling on Federal Lands Down Under Obama. Romney said that “oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land.” PolitiFact rates that half-true, saying the number is factually correct but “cherry-picked.” “There’s nuance in the number,” they write. “Production under Obama was hobbled due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, making a one-year figure subject to cherry-picking. And itâs not at all clear that the president in charge when the oil is taken out of the ground deserves full credit or blame; years of prior policies on exploration and drilling had an impact.” The New York Times concurs: “Oil and gas production on public lands has fluctuated during the Obama administration, but it has increased modestly (about 13 percent for oil and about 6 percent for gas) in the first three years of the Obama presidency, compared with the last three years of the administration of President George W. Bush, according to an analysis from the Energy Information Administration,” the paper writes. Continue Reading →
If you live around Dallas-Fort Worth, you may have noticed some shaking last night. No, it wasn’t Obama and Romney sparring over energy policy and the economy. It was another earthquake in an area that up until a few years ago had been seismically silent.
Around ten o’clock Tuesday night, a 2.7 magnitude earthquake struck near the town of Midlothian, Texas, according to the US Geological Survey. “It really shook our house too plus a loud boom,” one commenter on the website Texas Storm Chasers said.
Midlothian is part of the Barnett Shale, an area of drilling for natural gas. That natural gas is drilled by a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” where a mix of water, sand and chemicals is injected at high pressure deep underground to break up rock formations and release oil and natural gas. After a well is “fracked,” some of that liquid mixture comes back up. And it has to be disposed of.
Enter disposal wells. They’re essentially waste dumps that go even deeper underground, used to dispose of fracking liquids, and several scientific studies have made a definitive link between injecting fluids into these disposal wells and manmade earthquakes in the region (as well as other parts of the country).
It isn’t immediately clear if there’s any connection between this quake and disposal wells in the region. It can take months and even years to make such links scientifically, as we’ve reported earlier. But in the meantime you can read our earlier report: How Fracking Disposal Wells Are Causing Earthquakes in Dallas-Fort Worth
Tonight presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face incumbent President Barack Obama in the second of three debates in a tight race for an election just weeks away. Energy has been more of an issue in this election than recent presidential contests, with the candidates squaring off on coal, green jobs and climate change.
Today a new nationwide poll of over two thousand people by the University of Texas at Austin provides a glimpse into what voters feel about the policies of both candidates. And the results show a preference for the current president’s policies.
“Overall, 37 percent of respondents say Obamaâs platform is best for the country, while 28 percent favor Romneyâs views on energy,” says the new poll. “More than a third of those surveyed (35 percent) are not sure whose energy policies they prefer or are undecided.”
Sheril Kirshenbaum, director of the University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll, says in a statement that while the economy is a big issue this election, “two out of three consumers say energy issues are important to them,â she says. âSupport for increased production of domestic energy supplies remains strong, and weâre also seeing a lot of interest in the promotion of alternative forms of energy and energy-saving technologies that crosses party lines.â
And climate change is becoming more of an issue as well. Here’s what the poll found: Continue Reading →
From January to September the U.S. had the warmest first nine months of the year in its history, according to the latest ‘State of the Climate‘ report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And there have been numerous other anomalies in the climate as of late, the report says.
“The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September on record, at 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F),” the report says. The records go back to 1880.
There are some other happenings in the earth’s climate that may interest you, like the fact that Japan saw record warmth, while the U.K was cooler than normal. You can read about them all over at the NOAA.
Texas A&M scientist Anna Armitage and mangrove shrub on Pelican Island
The other day, a team of Texas A&M researchers was comparing satellite photos of the Texas coast. As the scientists looked at the images from the past 20 years, they noticed something different: there are now a lot more mangroves. Continue Reading →
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
Two reporters for The New York Times were detained Wednesday while covering protesters at the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Wood County in East Texas. The two reporters, Dan Frosch and Brandon Thibodeaux, who identified themselves as members of the media, were handcuffed by a pipeline company security guard and a local police officer. After ten minutes, the two were released, but told they had to leave the property or face arrest. They were on private property at the time at the invitation of the landowner.
When the incident first came to our attention, we emailed several questions to TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline. They sent a statement to the media (which you can read after the jump) that failed to address our questions, but promised they would get to them. After 24 hours, we now have some answers. And, inevitably, more questions.
TransCanada says the two Times reporters were in the pipeline’s right of way at the time of the arrest, and that they were detained by an off-duty police officer contracted to provide security for the pipeline construction. Continue Reading →
This infographic shows how new wells can cause water contamination when they're drilled in the same formation as old abandoned wells.
Abandoned wells in Pennsylvania are putting landowners at risk for drilling-induced explosions and water contamination, according to a new investigative series by our fellow StateImpact reporters in Pennsylvania. After a methane geyser erupted in the Pennsylvania countryside last year, StateImpact Pennsylvania is now looking into the dangers of abandoned, aka âorphaned,â wells in their Perilous Pathways series.
Laurie Barr lives in Pennsylvania and remembers reading those reports about the geyser earlier this year. âI thought, whoa, what the fâ?â Barr recalls. âCan you imagÂine stepÂping out to shovel snow, and your whole house goes poof?â Now she’s made it her mission to find where the orphaned wells are and what danger they pose.
Texas also is home to abandoned wells, as we reported earlier this year. Over 7,869 orphan wells scatter across the oil and gas fields of Texas, which cost millions of dollars to plug.
UPDATE: The latest on this story can be found here.
The massive (and controversial) Keystone XL pipeline, which will take heavy crude harvested from oil sand pits in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, is currently under construction. And it’s also under protest.
For weeks, protesters have chained themselves to tractors and fences in attempts to halt construction of the pipeline. Some have camped out in trees in the pipeline’s path. And several private landowners have protested the pipeline’s construction as well. Landowner Eleanor Fairchild was arrested this week on her own property for trespsassing as she and actress Daryl Hannah attempted to stop a bulldozer clearing a path for the pipeline. You can watch their protest in the video above.
Joining the ranks Wednesday were two reporters covering the protests for TheNew York Times. Reporter Dan Frosch and an unnamed photographer accompanying him were covering a protest on private land yesterday when they were handcuffed and detained by a security guard for TransCanada (the Canadian company behind the pipeline) and local police.
The reporters were on the private land at the invitation of the landowner, but were detained for trespassing, according to a spokesperson for the newspaper. After identifying themselves as members of the media, they were released, but told they had to leave the property immediately or they’d be arrested for trespassing. Continue Reading →
Dr. David Allen is leading a new study on methane emissions from drilling.
The University of Texas at Austin is wrapping up the final stages of a new study that looks at how much methane is released during the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Understanding how much methane is released is important to decreasing emissions overall, as methane is a known âgreenhouse gasâ that contributes to climate change.
The research team and environmental research companies URS and Anodyne Research have been busy measuring methane emissions at natural gas production sites throughout the United States.
Dr. David Allen of UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering led the study. âWe are using a variety of different techniques, direct source measurements, directly measuring emissions at the point of origin, but also downwind of production,â he says. The study will aslo use data from nine participating natural gas producers.
Though natural gas burns cleaner than fossil fuels once its been produced, not a lot of research has been done about how much methane is released into the air during drilling and transportation with data drawn from the actual sites. Continue Reading →
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