House committee rakes EPA over coals

Plan to shut down oil and gas production ridiculed

A host of witnesses told five members of the Texas House Environmental Regulation Committee Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s threatened shutdown of the energy industry in the Permian Basin is very ill-founded.

Convened at 9 a.m. by Chairman Brooks Landgraf of Odessa in the Ector Theater downtown, the committee heard Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar say a shutdown with the Basin’s designation as a non-attainment area would cause the loss of 25,000 jobs in West Texas and lower the state’s annual gross domestic product by $13 billion.

“The impact would be significant,” Hegar said.

Texas Oil & Gas Association spokesman Bryan Shaw said the EPA is basing its threat on results from one air monitor in Hobbs, N.M., and three in Carlsbad, whereupon Democratic Reps. Vikki Goodwin of Austin and Penny Morales Shaw of Houston said the Basin needs monitors to gauge air pollution here. Landgraf read part of an Oct. 13 letter he had received from EPA Administrator Michael Regan that said the Basin’s oil- and natural gas-related emissions are causing an unusually high number of lung ailments and various types of cancer.

However, Medical Center Hospital President-CEO Russell Tippin said his regional hospital is seeing a normal number of those cases. “Our main problem is uncontrolled diabetes,” Tippin said.

“That’s not from oil and gas, it’s from chips and salsa in the restaurants.”

Regan had been invited to address the hearing, but he didn’t appear after Landgraf called his name three times and had an aide look in the lobby for him.

Kermit City Councilwoman Hope Williams and Monahans Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Teresa Burnett both said they had lived in the Basin all their lives and that they and their families are perfectly healthy.

Texas Railroad Commission Strategic Planning Manager Colleen Forrest reported that her agency began plugging abandoned oil and gas wells in 1984 and it has overseen the plugging of more than 40,000 since then, including 1,068 in fiscal 2022 from Sept. 1, 2021, to Aug. 31. In fiscal 2023, the RRC plans to plug 800 abandoned wells with $25 million from the Department of the Interior in addition to 1,000 wells that the agency anticipates plugging from industry fee and fine revenue from the Texas Oil and Gas Regulatory and Cleanup Fund.

Nacero CEO Jay McKenna of Houston said his company’s plan to build a $7-billion natural gas-to-clean gasoline plant at the oilfield ghost town of Penwell 15 miles west of Odessa off I-20 was greatly bolstered by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s granting of an air quality permit late last year.

McKenna said the plant will work in concert with the NextEra wind farm company to further reduce its environmental footprint.

Eric Lykins, Odessa District engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, said his department’s biggest upcoming project is the $340-million widening of I-20 to six lanes over 40 miles from west of Odessa to east of Midland between 2025-30.

Lykins said there has been a very disturbing increase in traffic fatalities in his 12-county district since the waning of the COVID pandemic with 158 so far this year and the alarming prospect of surpassing 2018’s record number of 212.

“The most significant factors are failing to drive in a single lane, driving under the influence and not buckling up,” Lykins said.

Other House Environmental Regulation Committee members who took part were Republican Reps. Jay Dean of Longview and Kyle Kacal of Bryan.