Tag Archives: oil and gas
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
Report: As TCEQ Sits Idle, Polluters Double Illegal Air Pollution in 2018
Unauthorized emission incidents resulted in 135 million pounds of illegal air pollution, according to a new report by Environment Texas.
The oil and gas industry in Texas is largely responsible for doubling the amount of illegal air pollution in the state last year, according to a report released...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
Rick Perry Exports His Pay-to-Play Politics to Ukraine
Perry has talked about his aspirations for Ukraine to become “the Texas of Europe.” On the corporate cronyism front, he may just have succeeded.
It appears that Rick Perry exported his pay-to-play politics from the Texas governor’s mansion to the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian oil and gas sector, where,...Read More
