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Blogs
May 24, 2013
Coal Is Making a Comeback, and Nobody Burns it Like Texas
For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. ... More >>
News
April 18, 2013
Trinity East's Vapor Chase
Drilling thousands of feet into the earth is a cakewalk compared with dealing with City Hall.
Blogs
April 9, 2013
Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs Want a Vote On Trinity East Drillsites in 30 Days
Before term limits and elections change the complexion of the Dallas City Council in unknowable ways, Scott Griggs and Angela Hunt want an up-or-down vote on proposed natural gas wells along the Trinity River. Last month, the Dallas Plan Commission voted down the permits for drilling outfit Trinity ... More >>
Blogs
March 18, 2013
Plan Commission Prepares to Vote for the Second Time on Fracking Along Trinity River This Thursday
For Trinity East, the Fort Worth-based shale gas producer, the Dallas Plan Commission meeting this Thursday is make or break. Nearly six years ago, the company bid on drilling city-owned land while Dallas sought to shore up a budget shortfall. Since then, the company shelled out tens of millions of ... More >>
Blogs
March 13, 2013
Rafael Anchia Files a Bill to Help Texas Export its Natural Gas
State Representative Rafael Anchia of Dallas filed legislation Friday that he hopes will position Texas to lead the sustainable age. He describes it as a launching point for a dialogue in the Legislature, a "shell" of a bill that will eventually drive workforce development for the next generation of ... More >>
Blogs
February 27, 2013
City of Dallas Owns Stake in Irving Well That's Already Been Drilled By Trinity East
Before City Manager Mary Suhm struck a secret side deal with natural gas producer Trinity East to drill on parkland in the Trinity River floodplain, there were two, lesser-known gas wells situated in Irving that Dallas stood to collect royalty checks on. According to Railroad Commission of Texas d ... More >>
Blogs
February 21, 2013
Plano Lawmaker Authors Bill to Strip Cities of Right To Regulate Oil and Gas Drilling
State Representative Van Taylor, a real-estate investment banker from Plano, has introduced legislation that would settle, once and for all, who gets the last word on drilling under private property: That would be the Railroad Commission of Texas. The bill, filed Tuesday, would strip from Texas mun ... More >>
Blogs
February 14, 2013
Dallas' City Plan Commission Just Got a Very Special Workshop on How Safe Gas Drilling Is
When we last left the beleaguered members of the City Plan Commission, they were opting to once again delay a vote on energy company Trinity East's application to drill for natural gas in the floodplain along the Trinity River. This morning, the CPC was subjected to a four-hour workshop on gas drill ... More >>
Blogs
February 12, 2013
Environmental Groups Wants EPA Investigated Over Dropped Parker County Case
Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen -- along with more than 80 other groups from across the country -- are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency's withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its ... More >>
Blogs
February 7, 2013
Mary Suhm's Drilling Memo Shows Typical City Hall Pattern: Decide, Then Pretend to Listen
So Mayor Mike Rawlings responded, sort of, to Schutze's post this morning about City Manager Mary Suhm's double-super-secret letter of understanding with gas drilling company Trinity East, in which she promised the city's staff would do its level best to get the company the permits it needs to drill ... More >>
Blogs
February 7, 2013
Plan Commission Puts Off Vote on Fracking Permits, Begging City Council to Do Something
The Dallas Plan Commission voted to delay any decision on permitting natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, telegraphing a clear message Thursday to City Council: Your move. Commissioner Gloria Tarpley remains none too pleased about being asked to consider a permit that currently runs af ... More >>
Blogs
February 4, 2013
A Year Since Disclosure Law, Fracking Fluid Remains a Mystery
A year ago, a Texas law was supposed to bring the raw ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing out of the shadows and into the sunlight. The process, which involves blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into shale formations a mile below the surface, isn't subject to the federal ... More >>
Blogs
January 25, 2013
In Texas, a Company is Now Fracking Uranium
Because injecting mysterious chemical cocktails deep underground to release hard-to-reach deposits of natural gas hasn't proved controversial enough, miners are staking out a new frontier: uranium fracking. Yep. Uranium Energy Corp., a Canadian company with extensive operations in the "uranium belt ... More >>
Blogs
January 16, 2013
The EPA Cut a Deal To Drop Lawsuit Against Fracker in Parker County Case of Flaming Water
We've long wondered why EPA backed off of a lawsuit against Range Resources, the driller accused of contaminating a Parker County man's water well with natural gas and levels of benzene, a carcinogen, above safe drinking water standards. It issued an endangerment order against the company in Decembe ... More >>
Blogs
January 9, 2013
Absence of Two Plan Commissioners Could Tip the Balance in Favor of Fracking
It seemed a bit puzzling last week when Joe Alcantar, chair of the City Plan Commission, asked that the CPC reconsider Trinity East's request to drill in the Trinity River floodplain, which the body had just gotten through denying. Perhaps Alcantar, who voted in favor of Trinity East's proposal, ha ... More >>
Blogs
January 8, 2013
Proposed Frack Site on Trinity River Floodplain Will Include a Gas Processing Plant
Trinity East intends to sink natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, but it isn't the well pad itself that will consume most of that controversial real estate -- it's the natural gas processing plant they plan to set up right next to it. According to site plans for the Elm Fork lease, T ... More >>
Blogs
January 7, 2013
Dallas Plan Commission To Reconsider Illegal Floodplain Fracking, For Some Reason
Last time the City Plan Commission voted to deny a request to frack the Trinity River floodplain, its rationale seemed pretty clear: For now, it runs contrary to a city law that says fracking land prone to flooding isn't such a swell idea. The commissioners felt plum awkward on December. 20. With l ... More >>
Blogs
November 28, 2012
All Sides Are Pissed at City Council as Fracking Debate Comes to a Head
Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Morning News' Randy Lee Loftis posed a question we'd been wondering about ourselves: Just what the hell happened to that fracking ordinance the City Council was supposed to pass, the one that would finally and completely resolve all those unanswered questions about gas ... More >>
Blogs
October 30, 2012
Former EPA Chief Al Armendariz Said Frackers Lit a Well on Fire, So the Frackers Lawyered Up
Range Resources, a company that fracks shale formations across America, wants controversial former EPA regional chief Al Armendariz to shut up about what happened in Parker County. The company's lawyer sent him a letter recently insisting that "(he) cease from making further false and disparaging co ... More >>
Blogs
October 18, 2012
Clean Energy Coalition Calls for PUC to End Foot-Dragging on Solar Regulations
Wind, sun and bullshit: Texas has plenty of all three, and we've done a good job converting wind to electricity. So, why hasn't the sunny Lone Star State done more to create more power from the sun? Well, you could blame the bullshit. Today in Austin, The Clean Energy Works for Texas coalition, a ... More >>
Blogs
October 5, 2012
"Don't Frack My Park Day" Comes to White Rock This Weekend
On Saturday, a tad more than 1,400 people are expected to turn out to clean up their local green space for Dallas' It's My Park Day. The city launched the annual event last year as a way to give neighbors a sense of ownership of their parks and, one assumes, to squeeze a little bit of free labor out ... More >>
Blogs
September 28, 2012
FrackNation Creator Phelim McAleer Fibs About Parker County's Flaming Hose Case
Fracking is finally getting the Hollywood treatment. Promised Land, an anti-fracking film conceptualized by The Office's John Krasinski, co-written by Dave Eggers, starring Matt Damon and Hal Holbrook, and directed by Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting), is set in a hard-luck Pennsylvania farming ... More >>
News
September 20, 2012
Boom or Doom?
America’s fracking gold rush portends the greatest environmental disaster of a generation.
Blogs
September 13, 2012
A Moron's Guide to the Fracking of Dallas
In this week's print edition, staff writer Anna Merlan provides a handy guide to natural-gas drilling debate in Dallas. Read on for a primer, a glossary of terms, a look at the opponents and supporters and a special fracking board game! Important civic issues have a way of sneaking up on you. They ... More >>
Blogs
September 4, 2012
New Study Shows Fracking is Bad For Dallas' Air Quality. Environmentalists Want City Hall to Take Note
Much of the fracking debate has focused on if and how carcinogens like benzene and hexane find their way into the air and water supplies. Less attention has been paid to the impact of gas drilling on ozone levels, which is significant. Just how significant is hinted at in a new study published in th ... More >>
Blogs
August 15, 2012
Who's Watching the Watchers in Review of Controversial UT Fracking Report?
University of Texas prof Chip Groat's ties to the natural gas industry raised a few eyebrows last month after a report he served as lead researcher on gave the hydraulic fracturing process a clean bill of health. "New Study Shows No Evidence of Groundwater Contamination from Hydraulic Fracturing," t ... More >>
Blogs
August 2, 2012
After Dueling Presentations, City Council Still Isn't Quite Sure What To Do About Gas Drilling
We promised you a throwdown during yesterday afternoon's gas drilling hearing before the city council, the first step towards an updated ordinance on drilling within city limits. Dallas Drilling, meanwhile, guaranteed a "smackdown." It's possible in retrospect that those were slight overstatements, ... More >>
Blogs
July 30, 2012
The Frackers and the Environmentalists Will Square Off at Dallas City Hall This Week
This was all supposed to be wrapped up months ago. The City Council formed the Gas Drilling Task Force more than a year ago, which was initially scheduled to wrap things up and have a final recommendation by November. A handful of issues -- proper setbacks, whether to allow drilling in parks and flo ... More >>
Blogs
July 24, 2012
Lead Researcher of UT Fracking Report Has Substantial Ties To Industry
Back in February, I wrote about a heavily publicized report released by the University of Texas Energy Institute that billed itself as the authoritative guide for regulators wrestling with the extraction of natural gas from shale formations and the novel combination of directional drilling and hydra ... More >>
Blogs
July 23, 2012
Associated Press Says Fracking Debate Based on Bad Science. What Science?
The Associated Press has news for the people who live above the shale formations experts say have transformed America's energy terrain: Critics of the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing are as guilty of hyperbole, or downright dishonesty, as the industry's most ardent defenders. T ... More >>
Blogs
June 26, 2012
Texas Senators Demand EPA Review of Fracking Endangerment Order in Parker County
Six Republican members of the U.S. Senate -- including Texas' Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn -- have requested an investigation of the EPA's decision to accuse a natural gas producer of contaminating a North Texas water well. In a letter sent last week, the senators asked the EPA inspector ge ... More >>
Blogs
May 31, 2012
Trinity East Says Its Floodplain Fracking Plans Are Kosher With the Army Corps of Engineers
Join Unfair Park once again as we delve into the deep and thorny question: Where exactly can the fracking company Trinity East drill for natural gas in the city of Dallas? Today's episode: The Corps of the Matter. A
Blogs
May 24, 2012
In Fight Over Flammable Parker County Water Well, Judge Decides Who Is, Isn't A Journalist
Tricky work deciding who gets the protections of a journalist in court. In the case of a natural gas production company suing a Parker County man who blames it for contaminating his water well, state district Judge Trey Loftin attempted to suss it out in a recent order compelling fracking blogger Sh ... More >>
Blogs
May 24, 2012
Trey Loftin, the Judge in a High-Profile Fracking Case, is Bragging in Campaign Mailers About His EPA Nut-Kicking
Politics is politics, and incumbents running for re-election in conservative Parker County, Texas, where the local economy is fueled entirely by shale-gas production, want to look like champions of the industry. But what if you're a judge? And what if, at the very moment you put up fliers of Rush Li ... More >>
Blogs
May 17, 2012
As Dallas Considers Fracking in Parkland and Floodplains, the Usual Suspects Speak Out
It was Dallas city council member Tennell Atkins who, during yesterday's discussion of the city's still-far-off gas-drilling regulations, posed the million-dollar question. "Do you think that it's safe to drill in the city of Dallas?" he asked task force chair Lois Finkelman. Finkelman was noncommi ... More >>
Blogs
May 15, 2012
Q&A with Trinity East Manager: Leases, Floodplains, and the Money Beneath Dallas
Four years have passed since Trinity East signed on as the largest gas lease-holder with the city of Dallas, and the company still doesn't know when it will be allowed to drill its first well -- if ever. As the company's name suggests, Trinity East wants to drill for natural gas along the east side ... More >>
Blogs
May 9, 2012
Trinity East Wants to Drill in the Floodplain
Ah, the Trinity River corridor, that swath of green that anchors urban Dallas to Mother Nature. How we cherish it. Unless, that is, someone -- Mayor Mike Rawlings, for example -- wants to build a toll road through its heart ... Or maybe dump a few hundred gallons of pig blood into the river ... O ... More >>
Blogs
April 30, 2012
EPA Regional Chief Al Armendariz Steps Down In Wake of "Crucify" Comment
Before SMU prof Al Armendariz had even warmed the seat at his post as EPA regional chief, he was pilloried as an activist whose research into the air pollution caused by fracking operations made him unfit to run a five-state office overseeing some of the industry's most important drilling grounds. ... More >>
News
April 26, 2012
How One Man's Flaming Water Fired Up a Battle Between Texas and the EPA
Steve Lipsky's epic battle and what it means for the future of fracking.
Blogs
April 25, 2012
Welcome to Colleyville, Home of the Most Scrutinized Fracking Site in North Texas
The thing about air pollution is it doesn't heed county lines or city limits signs. Neither did the shale gas boom, until it moved into the cities and suburbs, where gas producers found themselves navigating a loud, patchwork quilt of municipal regulations that varied from town to town. It happene ... More >>
Blogs
April 9, 2012
What the Pro-Drillers in Southlake Don't Get About the Shale Gas Market
Back in November, we wrote about Southlake, the well-heeled 'burb at whose city limits sign the fracking boom was knocking. In many ways, Southlake was emblematic of the difficulties gas producers faced as they followed the shale formation -- a mile underground -- out of the pastures and into densel ... More >>
Blogs
March 28, 2012
The Call for Tighter Fracking Regulations in Dallas Got a Little Louder Last Night
Councilman Scott Griggs kicked off last night's festival of shared discontent over the possibility of drilling in Dallas under the ordinance changes recommended by the drilling task force. Two city drilling task force members, a former member of the Fort Worth drilling task force, members of environ ... More >>
Blogs
March 26, 2012
Economides: Texas Lost $7.7 Billion By Not Using Natural Gas To Keep Lights On
Dr. Michael Economides, author, CNBC regular and University of Houston professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, says Texas lost out on some $7.7 billion between 2005 and 2011 primarily because we didn't use natural gas for electricity. Economides, it should be noted, is a vocal industry ... More >>
Blogs
March 21, 2012
If You're a Republican Man, You Favor Fracking; If You're a Democratic Woman, Not So Much
You've likely noticed that gas stations have been changing the numbers on their signs to reflect an increasingly more expensive product, over and over again. As prices creep around the $4 mark while campaign season stirs, and energy continues its rise to the top tier of our national concerns, views ... More >>
Blogs
March 20, 2012
State Begins Crunching Costs of Road Damage From Gas Exploration
The Texas Department of Transportation foots much of the bill for the road damage brought about by trucks traveling to and from hydraulic fracturing operations, and for the first time, the agency is collecting data with an eye to possibly recouping future funds. Short-term spending for TxDOT includ ... More >>
Blogs
March 19, 2012
Environmental Chemist Wilma Subra on the Barnett Shale Bonanza and Its Costs
By 2008, the high price of natural gas, coupled with the novel combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, touched off a modern-day gold rush in the Barnett Shale. Regulators were caught on their heels. "They moved forward very rapidly, and state regulatory programs had a difficult ... More >>
Blogs
March 8, 2012
Rolling Stone Article Launches Fracking Fight with Chesapeake
Chesapeake Energy and Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goodell are battling over his March feature. The abridged version of the lengthy piece, unpacked further by Brantley, goes like this: Drilling appears to be a Ponzi scheme with Chesapeake's founder, Aubrey McClendon, as its leader. Neither McClendon no ... More >>
Blogs
March 2, 2012
Fracking Boom a Ponzi-Inflated Bubble About To Pop? Rolling Stone Sure Thinks So.
Is the United States the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas?" as President Barack Obama has said. Or has the energy industry used fuzzy math to hype its estimated reserves to entice buyouts and Wall Street investment? Tough to say for sure, but last month the U.S. Energy Information Administration scaled ... More >>
Blogs
February 21, 2012
This Fracking Map: Activists Plot More Than 100 Drilling Leases on City-Owned Property
This afternoon, Dallas Residents at Risk, a coalition of of anti-fracking activists, will unveiling their map featuring what they say are more than 100 drilling leases on city-owned land totaling some 1,400 acres. The colorful visual shows that the extent of gas drilling leases in Dallas goes well b ... More >>
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