Articles tagged: oil and gas
From Boom to Bloodbath
The Permian Basin’s shale revolution is over and renewable energy is surging. What does that mean for Texas’ future?
From Boom to Bloodbath The Permian Basin’s shale revolution is over and renewable energy is surging. What does that mean for Texas’ future? By Justin Miller...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
Living With Discomfort and Ambiguity in ‘Finding Home in Boomtown’
A new documentary follows a couple’s winding path toward starting a tiny-home community for the homeless in West Texas.
Outside a big, stately home in a Midland suburb sits a pocket-size tiny house. Curious passersby peer inside the model, picking up flyers and bottled water from...Read More
COVID-19 is Buying Time for Gulf Coast Towns Fighting Oil and Gas Projects
In Surfside Beach, Port Aransas, and elsewhere, contentious new infrastructure projects may be stalled by the accelerating pandemic.
Surfside Beach, a village of 560 people an hour south of Houston, is known for a few things: It has one of the state’s handful of drive-on beaches, attracting...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
‘Trans Pecos’ Is a Beautiful Plea to Protect West Texas
This visually striking film captures the innate beauty of far West Texas and the threats posed to it by oil and gas infrastructure.
“To be part of this land,” rancher Pilar Pedersen says early on in Trans Pecos, “it’s just ephemeral. Nobody owns this land.” Living in West Texas’ ...Read More
Six Texas Oil Refineries Are Among the Nation’s Worst Benzene Polluters, Data Shows
Benzene was detected at the facilities’ fencelines, and nearby communities could be exposed to the cancer-causing pollutant.
The 367-mile Texas Gulf Coast now holds an unenviable honor: It is home to six of the nation’s most prolific polluters of benzene, an invisible, deadly gas th...Read More
As Fossil Fuel Industry Invests Billions in New Texas Facilities, it Could Unleash a Huge Emissions Bomb
A new report finds that a pipeline of new and proposed oil and gas projects—many of them in Texas—could produce half a billion tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions a year.
A hulking new $10 billion ethane cracker near Corpus Christi set for completion by 2022. A trio of approved liquified natural gas export terminals near Brownsvi...Read More