The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation has funded research resulting in a report, “Emissions in the Stream: Estimating the Greenhouse Gas Impacts of an Oil and Gas Boom,” by to professors at UT Austin. The report focuses on downstream sources of methane emissions, and will be followed by a report…
I recently heard a presentation by Dr. Scott Tinker, head of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas. He is the founder of the Switch Energy Alliance, about which I’ve written before. Switch Energy Alliance is “a 501(c)(3) dedicated to inspiring an energy-educated future that is objective,…
Three recent cases illustrate a little known aspect of Texas law – administrative law and how it works, and doesn’t work. Although the cases don’t directly affect mineral owners, they show how different the Texas Railroad Commission’s administrative process is from other agencies’. Many disputes in Texas are resolved not…
Last month the Environmental Defense Fund released an analysis of NOAA satellite data estimating volumes of gas flared in the Permian Basin in 2017. Its findings: operators report half of the amount of gas actually flared. 104 Bcf of gas is enough to serve all needs of Texas’ seven largest…
Dr. Scott Tinker, the Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas, and the Texas’ State Geologist, produced and starred in a film a couple of years ago called Switch. It provides an overview of how we use energy in the world and the opportunities and challenges facing…
An article in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman – “How gas flare-offs could bring water” – caught my attention. It was written by Vaibhav Bahadur, an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UT Austin. He posits that natural gas could be used to harvest water from the atmosphere (“atmospheric water harvesting”), enough…
An article in the Harvard Business Review, Oil’s Boom-and-Bust Cycle May Be Over. Here’s Why, provides an excellent overview of how the global oil market has been changed fundamentally by development of shale oil resources. Excerpts: U.S. shale producers “now represent half of U.S. oil production, up from a mere 10%…
My clients regularly complain of flares from wells on their property. Most leases don’t require royalty payments on flared gas, so their royalty is going up in smoke. Flares often don’t function properly, resulting in emissions of toxic gases. Flares make noise. The Environmental Defense Fund recently released an excellent…
The DC Court of Appeals and the US District Court for the Northern District of California have struck down orders of the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management postponing compliance dates for the Obama administration’s rules requiring the oil and gas industry to monitor and reduce methane emissions. Both…
A recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project and Environment Texas, reviewing results of state records reporting illegal air releases from oil and gas facilities between 2011 through 2016, finds that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality imposed fines for less than three percent of 24,839 “upset” events, even though…