{"id":22597,"date":"2012-12-27T09:09:27","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T15:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=22597"},"modified":"2012-12-27T09:09:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T15:09:29","slug":"lawmaker-targets-natural-gas-drilling-exemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/12\/27\/lawmaker-targets-natural-gas-drilling-exemption\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmaker Targets Natural Gas Drilling Exemption"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_22598\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 125px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/12\/27\/lawmaker-targets-natural-gas-drilling-exemption\/attachment\/2255\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-22598\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-22598\" title=\"2255\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/12\/2255.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"125\" height=\"175\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo courtesy of Rep. Burnam<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">State Rep. Lon Burnam is going after a tax exemption for natural gas drillers.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Texas Lawmakers have already filed more than 400 bills for the upcoming legislative session. Only a fraction of those will end up making it to a vote.\u00a0 But before the session begins, we thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at some environment and energy proposals.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.house.state.tx.us\/members\/member-page\/?district=90\">Lon Burnam<\/a> is state representative from Fort Worth, a Democrat. His House Bill 55 would end a tax exemption that benefits natural gas drillers in the state. The<a href=\"http:\/\/www.window.state.tx.us\/taxinfo\/nat_gas\/index.html\"> exemption<\/a> was put in place to spur the gas industry in the late 80s, when many thought Texas had developed all of its gas resources. Critics like Burnam say now that the state has entered a new gas boom thanks to horizontal drilling and hydro-fracking, there\u2019s no more need for it. He estimates closing the exemption would bring in an extra $1 billion a year in revenue for the state.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a huge tax loophole at the expense of the rest of the people in Texas,&#8221; Rep. Burnam says. &#8220;Because they don\u2019t need and economic incentive for this exemption.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But closing it will probably be a hard sell. Many other lawmakers credit Texas relative economic prosperity to the oil and gas boom that the exemption has helped foster. \u00a0Burnam filed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/session\/82R\/bills\/HB2001\/\">a similar bill<\/a> last <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/texas-energy\/energy\/texas-lawmakers-mull-reducing-gas-tax-break\/\">legislative session<\/a> without success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texas Lawmakers have already filed more than 400 bills for the upcoming legislative session. Only a fraction of those will end up making it to a vote.\u00a0 But before the session begins, we thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at some environment and energy proposals. Lon Burnam is state representative from Fort [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":22598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[15,22,310],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}