With all the news about the false controversy involving hydraulic fracturing, the Railroad Commission of Texas is pre-emptively addressing concerns about another important issue for the Texas oil and gas industry–natural gas flares. Commissioner David Porter announced that the Eagle Ford Task Force will study the issue of whether Texas’s…
In April 2012, President Obama signed an executive order creating a six person committee to coordinate efforts among three government agencies to research the risks and benefits of unconventional oil and gas production. The committee is composed of two members each from the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency,…
Abundant oil and gas in Texas and the rest of the U.S. has already proven to have significant economic benefits, and not just to mineral owners in Texas and the U.S. It will continue to benefit the country as technology in this sector continues to improve. Our energy independence has…
The film Gasland purported to show how communities are adversely affected by hydraulic fracturing (also known as “fracing”). This film was full of inaccuracies and half-truths, and was apparently intended to incite opposition to fracing by masquerading as a “scientific” documentary. Environmentalists and politicians with a specific anti-energy agenda use…
Bayside Petroleum Company, based in Dallas, Texas, has been busy increasing its oil and gas production by renewing or acquiring leases in two mature oil and gas fields in Texas. Bayside recently renewed its leases in the Muscadine Field in Tyler County, Texas in preparation for rejuvenating this field, first…
It seems like a noncontroversial statement to say that increasing the supply of a product will lower its price. But because of politics, that statement still elicits arguments and recriminations in Washington when the discussion is about oil or gas production. At a March 20, 2012 press conference, American Petroleum…
Until recently, most of us in Texas and throughout the country (unless you had an oil and gas lease) struggled with high gasoline prices. However, a new study entitled, “Are the Energy States Still Energy States?” by Mark Snead, an economist and Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of…
Finally a piece of good news and an intelligent decision has come from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)! It has taken them more than a year, but in the end even the EPA had to accept scientific fact. Recently, the EPA vacated an emergency order from December 2010 prohibiting Fort…
Earlier this month, a study by the New York-based World Economic Forum (WEF) found that the energy industry was responsible for 9% of all new job growth in the United States in 2011. In the US, the oil and gas industry grew at 4.5% last year, compared to a 1.7%…
In a suit with implications for Texas gasoline consumers, the American Petroleum Institute filed a petition for review in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last week against the Environmental Protection Agency over what it deems unachievable bio-fuels use requirements. These latest requirements are in the…