Gas Prices

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 >>

A Republican State Senator is Pushing For an Increase in the Texas' Gas Tax

Texas' 20-cent-per-gallon gas tax hasn't changed since 1991. That's despite the erosion of the tax's purchasing power -- the Wall Street Journal estimates that the gas tax buys half as much concrete, steel, and other materials as they did 20 years ago -- and a glaring need -- the state comptroller's ... More >>

Report Predicts More Shutdowns of Coal-fired Power Plants, But Not in Texas

Rock-bottom natural gas prices have forced the wonks over at the Brattle Group to revise their national prediction for the number of coal-fired power plants likely to retire in the coming years steeply upward. And when we say steeply, we mean by some 25 gigawatts, or roughly enough electricity to po ... More >>

America's Petro-Terrorists

How greedy speculators bought politicians and drove up the price of oil.

Politics of Misdirection: Dallas-based Luminant and Coalition of Utilities Blame the EPA for Coal's Creeping Demise

Dallas-based Luminant, the electricity generation arm of Energy Future Holdings, and a number of other utilities that own coal-fired fleets are attempting to head off an EPA rule that would curb the amount of nervous system-disrupting mercury, cancer-causing dioxin, arsenic and lead emitted from the ... More >>

Southwest Airlines' Herb Kelleher: Energy Independence, As You Understand It, Is A Myth

Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher and a gaggle of other titans, from former U.S. Spec Ops commanders to Sam Gilliland, chief executive officer of Dallas-based Sabre Holdings, reject outright the idea that we can drill our way to energy independence. In an Energy Security Leadership Council ... More >>

So There's a Good Chance Energy Future, Texas' Largest Power Generator, Goes Broke

A major credit-rating agency is expressing grave doubts about the ability of the state's largest nonregulated power generator to pay off its debt. Energy Future Holdings, the Dallas-based parent company of power generator Luminant, transmission company Oncor and retail electricity provider TXU Ener ... More >>

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 >>

Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts

Warren Buffett Calls His Investment in Dallas-Based Energy Future Holdings a "Big Mistake," At Risk of Being Wiped Out

Warren Buffett, the inimitable Jesus of Investing, got it wrong, he admits. Investing in the highly leveraged buyout of Texas utility TXU by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Goldman Sachs was a bad bet, plain and simple, he told his shareholders in a letter Saturday. And if things at the former TXU (now ... More >>

ERCOT to City Council: Keeping the Lights On Means Sending the Right "Price Signals"

Council member Delia Jasso is officially disturbed by ERCOT's charts, particularly the bar graph showing a big gray empty space between the reserve margin we need to make sure the lights stay on during hot summer afternoons and the colored part that indicates how much generation capacity we'll actua ... More >>

Shippin' Shale: Energy Independence Means Exporting It So We Can Import It. Got That?

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to us either. A couple of weeks ago we asked if America could stop pretending that politicians and their benefactors in the energy industry actually give two shits about "energy independence" or "energy security," or any of the other portent-laden, focus-grouped catch phr ... More >>

Read NCTCOG's Long Look-See at How to Fund the Cotton Belt Regional Rail Corridor

​At 1 today the Regional Transportation Council will discuss the doc you see below: the 132-page report finished last month as part of the so-called Cotton Belt Corridor Innovative Finance Initiative, which the North Central Texas Council of Governments touts on today's agenda as "a thorough inves ... More >>

Shippin' Shale, or: What's That You Say About Our Energy Independence?

​The days of lease-bearing landmen making it rain on the Barnett Shale are over. The industry became so proficient at fracturing the rock thousands of feet beneath the surface and extracting the gas trapped within that they glutted the market. Gas prices took a swan dive and have stagnated eve ... More >>

Fear and Fracking in Southlake

In one of America's wealthiest suburbs, an unlikely band of drilling opponents helped drive away the world's biggest energy companies. Did they save the town or ruin it?

Get Moving! High Oil Prices Good (For Texas), More Rush-Hour Red Line ... and Streetcars

Dallas Area Rapid TransitThe Mockingbird Station along DART's Red Line, which will see expanded rush-hour service beginning April 11​Bloomberg News says this morning that higher oil prices may be bad for Texans, but are good for Texas -- especially the so-called Rainy Day Fund Gov. Rick Perry does ... More >>

i Fratelli Pizza: Just What We Wanted, and No Sneaky Delivery Charge

​i Fratelli Pizza 2208 Dallas Parkway 972-608-8833 Promised Delivery Time: 30 minutes Actual Delivery Time: 26 minutes The Score No delivery fee or fuel surcharge: 10 points Polite, professional order-taker: 15 points No online ordering: -5 points Delivering sooner than promised: 20 Point ... More >>

Two Months Into Budget, City's Already $4 Mil Down on Guesstimated Sales Tax Income

Sam MertenFIrst Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans​Perhaps you saw the story in the morning paper: According to the state comptroller's office, Dallas pulled in sales tax revenue totaling $14.5 million in November 2009. And while that's a considerable plunge from same-time-last-year's intake ($18.3 ... More >>

The T. Boone Pickens Alternative Energy Show Rolls Across America

Chewing the Fat: Spilling The Bills

You probably remember how last summer's painful gas prices set off a ripple effect, jacking the cost of everything else, including your groceries. Now that gas prices have crashed back to a mere inflated-enough-to-fatten-Exxon-execs-and-their-political-friends level, you're probably still waiting f ... More >>

Nom, Nom, Nom

The Libertine goes halvsies

GM's CEO Wagoner Insists GM Ain't Going Nowhere. But Where's the Beat?

Look Out, Avi, But Forbes Just Gave Folks a Reason to Move to Greenville

SMU's Bullock Has Gas (and Oil, Etc.)

AA's Tim Wagner Will Now Answer Your Questions and Concerns. Be Nice.

Funny Girl

High Cost of Lower Prices

Syriana II: Bee County

That's a Gas

Pumped Out

Major gas companies are driving away independent station operators, all in the name of greed