From the Texas Tribune: COTULLA — At a convention center in this city 70 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Dimmit County Judge Francisco Ponce said this week what many of the 200 people in the room were thinking. Texas Department of Transportation officials explained why the agency needed to move forward with plans to […]
It took years to reach a final decision, but on Wednesday the Dallas City Council denied several permits for a company hoping to drill within city limits. The company, Trinity East, had applied to drill and use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” at several wells on city land, including a golf course. While the permits were […]
Texas holds about 23 percent of the country’s natural gas reserves. And thanks in large part to the advent of drilling techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” Texas is producing more of it than any other state. This map shows how much natural gas each county produced from wells between June 2012 and June […]
With Plenty of Turbines and Pumpjacks Along the Way Over a thousand miles later, StateImpact Texas has returned from our first “Road Show,” a journey that took us from Austin to Midland-Odessa, then to Marfa, and back. Along the way, we heard stories of the drought, the drilling boom, and what everyday Texans think about […]
Please join us for a panel to discuss how drilling is changing West Texas: its impact on the land, water and community.
From ProPublica: When the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the […]
But for Those Outside the Boom, It’s Business as Usual It’s been over four years since a drilling company first drilled for (and hit) oil and gas in the Eagle Ford Shale. Since then, the region has become an economic engine for Texas, and to some degree, the country. While the region has seen several downsides to the […]
Oil and gas and energy special interest groups outspent others by a large margin during the regular session of the Texas legislature this year. 19 cents of every dollar spent on lobbying belonged to the energy and natural resources industry, according to a new report by Texans for Public Justice, a state watchdog group. And […]
From the Texas Tribune: LULING — Amid the dry weeds on a 470-acre ranch here, a rusted head of steel pokes up, a vestige of an oil well abandoned decades ago. Across the field stand two huge, old wooden oil tanks, one of them tilting like a smokestack on the Titanic. “Basically I get 61 acres […]
Increased use of natural gas to generate power in the U.S. is contributing to a decline in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) out today. While coal still makes up a substantial percentage of the nation’s electricity, particularly when power demands rise in the […]
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