Articles tagged: Fracking
Biden Plans to Ban All New Fracking Leases on Public Land. Will He Actually Do It?
The federal Bureau of Land Management has a habit of auctioning off parcels of its land to oil and gas developments. For years, Texas cities and environmentalists have sounded the alarm about the arrangements.
In 2017, the oil industry, aided by Donald Trump’s Interior Department, set its sights on a swath of plains northwest of Corpus Christi. The 1,600 acres, loca...Read More
With Storage Space Evaporating, the Oil and Gas Industry Will Get to Put Its Products Back Underground
The Railroad Commission has rolled back rules that once prohibited producers from storing liquid hydrocarbons in geological formations across the state, despite risks to aquifers.
Last month, as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed oil prices into negative figures, drillers in the state’s sprawling shale plays were still pumping and piping oil ...Read More
Coronavirus is Exposing the Faulty Foundations of the Texas Fracking Industry
The oil and gas sector was already having problems, but the fear and uncertainty around a global pandemic could end the Texas energy boom.
For the past few years, Texas has reaped the rewards of a huge oil boom centered on the shale formations in the Permian Basin. Companies gobbled up acreage acro...Read More
In Big Spring, a Rural Community Braces for Another Oil Bust
As oil prices plummet, the petroleum industry’s benefits and drawbacks for small towns are on full display.
Sometimes Big Spring is a boomtown. Sometimes it’s a bust. And usually, the defining factor is one simple number: the price of a barrel of crude. The commun...Read More
Joe Barton Resurfaces with a Blueprint for How to Bail Out the Oil Industry and Worsen Climate Change
As the former Texas congressman prepares to get into the lobbying game, the climate-change denier reflects on how he worked with industry to unleash a runaway drilling boom in the Permian Basin.
The legislation was marked with the number of the beast. Joe Barton’s staffers, perhaps sensing some irony, insisted that he reintroduce his 2015 bill that ...Read More
Bridge to Nowhere
Where the Texas Gulf Coast meets Mexico, a trio of fossil fuel companies is planning an industrial complex the likes of which Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has never seen.
Where the Texas Gulf Coast meets Mexico, a trio of fossil fuel companies is planning an industrial complex the likes of which Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has nev...Read More
Without Transmission Lines, Renewable Energy Still has a Long Way to Go — Literally
In Superpower, author Russell Gold tells the story of a Houston businessman’s ambitious plan to transform the electric grid.
If you want to understand the future of renewable energy, look to Texas. That’s the argument Russell Gold makes in his new book Superpower: One Man’s Quest ...Read More
Why is Texas’ Leading GOP Think Tank Suddenly All-In on an Anti-Wind Crusade?
The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s latest PR blitz is the kind of thing you’d expect to see from a seedy advocacy group, not a would-be policy braintrust.
If you were a newcomer trying to figure out how Texas politics works, a good start would be to look at the state’s two leading think tanks. The center-left Ce...Read More
Despite Public Health Risks, Trump’s EPA to Roll Back Regulation to Prevent Methane Leaks
The Obama-era regulation is meant to curb leaks of methane, which is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Last week, the staff of the environmental nonprofit Earthworks were on a retreat in West Texas when Sharon Wilson, a Dallas-based organizer for the group, decid...Read More