Articles tagged: oil
The Unlikely Demise of Texas’ Biggest Corporate Tax Break
After 20 years, the state’s most lucrative corporate welfare program comes to an end.
In 2001, state lawmakers and business leaders warned that the state’s high property tax rates were discouraging corporations from locating big projects in...Read More
Texas’ Largest Corporate Welfare Program Is Leaving Companies Flush and School Districts Broke
The state’s Chapter 313 program offers steep discounts on property taxes to attract big industrial projects that are supposed to pay off over the long term. But by the time these projects return to the tax rolls, much of that value has disappeared.
As the United States struggled to meet demands for fuel in the early 2000s, Motiva Enterprises decided to double the capacity of its oil refinery in the Gulf Co...Read More
One Researcher’s Quest to Quantify the Environmental Cost of Abandoned Oil Wells
Unplugged wells could be quietly leaking millions of pounds of methane in West Texas.
This story is one installment of a larger project by Grist and The Texas Observer. Support comes from the Pulitzer Center. Amy Townsend-Small has been chasing...Read More
Waves of Abandonment
The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells.
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‘No Teeth and No Funding’: How Regulators Failed to Police the Oil Industry
Budget cuts and long term disinvestment in local environmental agencies have hobbled the states’ ability to oversee fracking.
This story is one installment of a larger project by Grist and The Texas Observer. Support comes from the Pulitzer Center. The fracking boom in the Permian Ba...Read More
Dying Oil Companies’ Parting Gift: Millions in Clean Up Costs
One Texas oil and gas company left the state responsible for almost $10 million after its 2019 bankruptcy.
This story is co-published with Grist. When Weatherly Oil and Gas filed for bankruptcy in February 2019, the company was walking away from several hundred Te...Read More
Republicans Come to Texas to Prepare for the 2021 Redistricting Battle
The right has an audacious plan to, once again, use the redistricting process to maintain power. At ALEC’s annual conference in Austin, Republican state legislators learned how to navigate the legal and political challenges that will likely arise.
Last week, more than 200 conservative state lawmakers from around the country packed into a hotel conference room in Austin for a panel session entitled “How ...Read More
Bucking the Reign of Oil
With more of oil’s boom years behind us than ahead, oil and gas interests will become known increasingly by their uglier side effects, rather than their benefits.
The tank farm owned by the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park burned for four days, producing a cloud of thick black smoke that rose a mile above g...Read More
A New Study Shows that the Oil and Gas Industry is Wasting a Shocking Quantity of Natural Gas in Texas
Frackers are burning millions of dollars worth of natural gas — releasing hazardous chemicals and greenhouse gases into the air, worsening climate change and creating health risks.
A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California and San Francisco State University found that oil and gas operators in South Texas burned al...Read More