Texas Environmental News 2020 - January 13 (4 minute read)

Dow Chemical, the country’s largest producer of the carcinogen ethylene oxide, has been given the green light in Texas to continue standard manufacturing practices of the product. The odorless chemical used as a feed stock and to sterilize medical equipment is made at Dow’s chemical plant in Freeport. Prior to President Donald Trump’s presidency, the Environmental Protection Agency found the chemical to be a carcinogen. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality instated regulations in 2019 allowing exposure to the carcinogen to be 3500 times weaker than the EPA threshold, according to The Intercept. Leaks at the plant have been blamed for an extraordinary high rate of cancer in the area. In 2019 over 86 million dollars was donated by the chemical industry to political organizations, 1.4 billion in the past 12 years.

As waste water injection wells become harder to come by especially in the world’s biggest oil field – the Permian Basin, pro oil and gas legislators passed HB 2771 in the Texas legislature last May, essentially allowing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be a one-stop shop for oil&gas permitting. Surface discharge of oily slops including frack water that has been treated with pesticides, diesel, acids, detergents, lubricants, solvents, and anti-corrosives are on the table. The new permitting process likely will come into effect in 2021. Thirty-three state Democrats voted against the bill enabling oil&gas to pump this type of waste water into Texas rivers, lakes, creeks and arroyos while no Republicans dissented.

The Wink to Webster Pipeline, that plans to send Permian crude oil to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Exxon Baytown refinery, has broken ground despite incomplete easements and permitting. The pipeline, contested by land owners and environmentalists alike, is a joint venture which includes Exxon-Mobil and Plains All American. Officers of the latter corporation were found guilty on criminal charges in 2015 by a California court after a massive pipeline oil spill fouled state waters and killed wildlife.

Despite federal data to the contrary, methane released into the atmosphere in the Permian Basin has more than doubled since 2017, according to a new report issued by New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan’s office. Methane, a by-product of crude oil mining, is often considered a nuisance and unprofitable by oil and gas. It is a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than CO2. Flaring in the oilfield, designed to mitigate unwanted gas, is a practice, according to the Wall Street Journal, as “lightting billions of dollars on fire” every year. Moreover, incomplete combustion, often seen in the form as black smoke at the top of flares, is a source of air pollution. Venting, another oil field practice, allows methane to simple escape into the atmosphere. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, more than 107 trillion cft of methane was flared or vented in the Permian in 2017 – twice as much as industry reported.

A little less than a month after resigning as Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary, during the Ukraine Scandal's initial eruption, Rick Perry, former Governor of Texas, has re-joined billionaire Kelcy Warren’s Energy Transfer board. Warrens’ companies own over 70,000 miles of crude oil and gas pipelines. According to numbers released by PHMSA, Energy Transfer has one of  the worst safety records of major pipeline operators.