Railroad Commission

Barry Smitherman Retweets Image of Noose, Accompanied by Names of Senators Who Voted To Consider Gun Safety Proposals

RT @psychscriv: Make sure none of these people have seats in 2014. twitter.com/PsychScriv/sta...We are in trouble when these Rs side w/ Sen Reid— Barry Smitherman (@SmithermanTX) April 11, 2013 The U.S. Senate voted only to consider gun safety legislation Thursday, which includes expanded ba ... More >>

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 >>

Texas Railroad Commission Still Needs to Work on Holding Oil and Gas Producers Accountable

Once again, the Railroad Commission of Texas' raison d'être has been evaluated by a commission comprising state legislators and two regular citizens. Once again, it was given a reprieve from being abolished, given the gang-busting pace of oil and gas development over the last several years. But not ... More >>

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 >>

What Texas Drillers and Regulators Learned From the Barnett Shale

The development of North Texas' Barnett Shale did not go as smoothly as gas companies had hoped. The flaming water in Parker County, elevated levels of benzene in DISH, elevated rates of breast cancer in Flower Mound, and any number of other reports contributed to the perception among the general pu ... More >>

Reuters Drops Another Chesapeake Energy Bombshell: Sayonara, Property Rights

Chesapeake Energy, one of the shale boom's biggest players, has amassed the rights to drill on acreage roughly equal to the size of West Virginia. It's a shrewd strategy -- tie up all the land you can using outrageous sums of borrowed cash (more than $30 billion), freeze out your competitors, then d ... More >>

Report: Enforcement of Texas Oil and Gas Laws Is Kind of a Joke

Anybody who is at all familiar with the Texas Railroad Commission won't be surprised to learn that the almighty oil and gas regulator isn't exactly aggressive in its enforcement of the rules. The highly political commission's contradictory charges are to promote oil and gas development while holding ... More >>

Boom or Doom?

America’s fracking gold rush portends the greatest environmental disaster of a generation.

Al Armendariz, Ousted EPA Chief, Stood Up Congress Yesterday, But the Show Went On

Former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz was the designated whipping boy at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing this week, though it proceeded in absentia. Armendariz totally blew it off, to the supreme indignation of Chairman Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, and the assemble ... More >>

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 >>

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.

EPA Regional Chief Al Armendariz is Accused of "Crucifying" the Energy Industry in Texas

When President Obama appointed SMU prof Al Armendariz to the EPA regional post in Dallas back in 2009, it was to the sound of collective groaning from the energy industry and Republican politicos. Only months before, he'd authored a study citing oil and gas production as a major source of air pollut ... More >>

Pursuit of Shale Gas May Contaminate Water, Says UT Study, But It's Not Due to Fracking

The University of Texas Energy Institute cast a skeptical eye on the likelihood that the actual act of fracking could result in groundwater contamination. Particularly in the Barnett Shale, where aquifers sit thousands of feet above the shale rock, head researcher Dr. Chip Groat reasoned that the da ... 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?

After Talking Water Supply, Cause of Quakes, Drilling Task Force Gets Down to Business

Photo by Leslie MinoraPhilip Dellinger, Regional Ground Water/Underground Injection Control Chief for the EPA, presents a fracking overview.​Water, water, everywhere -- more than ample supply to frack, according to Jody Puckett, the director of Dallas Water Utilities, who spoke at yesterday's ... More >>

Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force's Field Trip Was Practical, Educational and Quite Hot

Photos by Taryn WalkerThe crowd at yesterday's Arlington trip sizes up an actively drilling Chesapeake site.Tuesday, Dallas gas drilling task force members -- and city council members Angela Hunt, Linda Koop and, but of course, Sheffie Kadane -- poured out of two white 15-passenger vans and into the ... More >>

Dallas's Gas Drilling Task Force to Begin Meetings With Overview From Fort Worth

Via.​This morning the city posted the agenda for the first-ever meeting of the Gas Drilling Task Force, which kicks off Tuesday at 2 p.m., don't be late. The agenda's mostly a bunch of introductory what-whats: Chair Lois Finkelman will give some opening remarks, outline its scope and schedule, rev ... More >>

How Texas Got Fracked Over By Gas Drillers

​We added insult to injury a long time ago in this whole business of fracking in Dallas -- you know, the kind of natural gas drilling where they blow up underground rocks in a geological formation called the Barnett Shale, releasing trapped gas. Now, if you don't mind, I need to add injury to insu ... More >>

Toxic Avenger: In the War Between the Feds and Texas, EPA Chief Al Armendariz has Science on His Side. Is That Enough?

A Month After EPA's Emergency Order Against Barnett Shale Gas Driller, a Federal Suit

​A little more than a month ago -- and before the Environmental Protection Agency assumed control of Texas's greenhouse gas permitting -- the EPA looked to be drawing a line in the sand over water contamination from gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, with an emergency order for Fort Worth-based Ra ... More >>

You Know Who Hates Texans? Why, the Railroad Commission of Texas, Naturally.

Your Texas Railroad Commission: Elizabeth Jones, Victor Carrillo and Michael Williams​The Texas Observer has published a story about the Railroad Commission of Texas that I want to call appalling, but I think the Railroad Commission has lost the ability to appall. The story exposes a pattern of de ... More >>

Read the Extra Safeguards Plan Commission Is Considering for Dallas's First Gas Drilling Site

Hensley Field, where XTO hopes to begin Dallas' first gas drilling operation.​After hearing from the public and discussing the issue at great length last Thursday, the City Plan Commission stopped short of recommending an SUP for XTO Energy to drill for gas at Hensley Field. It would be the first ... More >>

Not easy being Green

Ralph Nader's running for real this time

Bay botch

Oysterman Joe Nelson says pollution is slowly killing Galveston Bay. Is anyone listening?