New Report & Tool to Track Flaring

The “Texas Flaring Project” released a website and a report today analyzing how the state’s oil and gas industry wastes valuable natural gas by flaring and venting it off as waste. Each year, oil and gas operators waste nearly $900 million worth of natural gas through flaring, burning off a valuable resource. Three Texas nonprofits produced the new reports so local communities can hold the industry and its regulators accountable for flaring pollution in their own backyards.

While Texas leads the nation in flaring, many residents are uninformed about the problem and its links to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as pregnancy complications. Charged with limiting these harms, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) often fall short, according to the reports by Commission Shift, the Rio Grande International Study Center, and Texans for Public Justice.

An interactive website titled “Texas Flaring Project” allows Texans to explore flaring in any county across the state.

“Serving the few over the many, Texas regulators encourage the flaring of huge clouds of natural gas. This harms our families, our environment, and our economy – which all richly deserve better leadership,” said
Andrew Wheat, Research Director, Texans for Public Justice

Remember freezing February at election time

By Tom "Smitty" Smith for the Dallas Morning News 

Opinion piece urges consumers to hold officials accountable for failure to require power plant weatherization.

Read Smitty's op-ed.

TPJ & Sierra Club Investigate Oil and Gas Industry Clout

TPJ is engaged in a joint research project with the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter to explore oil & gas industry influence in Texas.  The organizations will publish a series of major reports to document and expose the political clout of Texas oil and gas interests on our elected legislators, regulators and statewide officials.  The reports will be published in the Spring.

Lobby Watch: Apache's Oil Find Exceeds Its Political Heft

The top political recipients of money from the Houston company that announced a giant West Texas oil discovery last fall are surprisingly bipartisan and notably exclude Gov. Abbott. 

A new Lobby Watch fracks the political funds underlying the 'Alpine High' oil find, which environmentalists say endangers Balmorhea's fabled San Solomon Springs desert oasis.

Read the new Lobby Watch.

Railroad Commissioners Awash in Oil & Gas Money

Texas’ three sitting Railroad Commissioners raised more than $11 million in recent years, taking 60 percent of it from the oil and gas industry that they’re elected to regulate, a new study by Texans for Public Justice, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter finds.

The report, “Rigged: How the Texas Oil and Gas Industry Bankrolls Its Own Regulators,” analyzes campaign contributions to the incumbent commissioners and to the four candidates who faced off to replace retiring Commissioner David Porter. Wayne Christian, who prevailed in Tuesday's election took 65 percent of his campaign money from the industry he will regulate. 

Read the full media release here.
Read the report:
Rigged: How the Texas Oil and Gas Industry Bankrolls Its Own Regulators.

Lobby Watch: Fracking Industry Gave Lawmakers $5.5 Million

The energy industry is the state's most generous to political candidates. No wonder lawmakers are flocking around bills to block local government restrictions on fracking operations. One pro-fracking bill counts more than a third of the House as its sponsors! 

Sen. Troy Fraser leads his chamber in his dependency on fossil-fuel funds. Fraser authored a leading fracking-protection bill, as well as other key bills servicing oil-and-gas interests. 

Using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, Lobby Watch tracks $5.5 million in recent legislative hydrocarbon contributions from wellhead to war chest.

Lobby Watch: Tax-Dodging Gas Producers Gave Politicos $2 Million in 2010 Elections

Enjoying a multi-billion-dollar tax exemption, Texas' biggest natural gas producers invested $1.5 million in Texas' last state election. Toss in contributions by their trade group and gas giants paid $2 million in protection money to the Texas politicians who refuse to seriously discuss repealing this gas-tax loophole in a time of staggering need.

The new Lobby Watch tracks which politicians are coziest with the gas giants.

Lobby Watch: 48 Legislators Hold Stakes in Top Natural Gas Producers

Texas legislators confronting a budget crisis of biblical proportions refuse to seriously discuss repealing a natural-gas-tax loophole that costs Texas more than $1 billion a year. Sniffing through legislators' personal finances, Lobby Watch finds that one in four lawmakers has a personal stake in at least one of the top gas producers in Texas.

Some members clearly are passing gas in the Capitol. Find out who in the new Lobby Watch.