This is a diverse group (click here for Facebook site) of Texans from El Paso to Houston, from Lubbock to McAllen. We are tired of the oil and gas industry running roughshod over us.
This is no minor network of people. Texas is suffering greatly with air pollution from the petroleum industry to repeated storms and flooding. Things are not good in Texas.
Texas Grassroots Network
June 20, 2017
Today, the Texas Grassroots Network (TXGN), (click here) released a new report titled "Oil & Gas Pollution's Impacts on Texas Families” which outlines how oil and gas development in Texas has exacerbated air pollution and public health issues, like asthma and other respiratory illnesses. The report tells the stories of three Texans, including a four-year- old boy, whose health has deteriorated as a result of harmful air pollution from oil and gas activities.
TXGN releases this report as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt threatens to extend the suspension of EPA’s 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) which curb methane emissions, smog-forming VOCs, and other toxic air pollutants such as benzene - in new, reconstructed and modified oil and gas sources—just like the ones featured in the report.
“Much of the air pollution documented in this report is preventable. No one should have to worry about their children or family members getting sick from the oil and gas industry, but that is the reality we face if EPA’s pollution standards are suspended—or even worse, repealed,” said Sharon Wilson the Gulf Regional Organizer for Earthworks. “Our children deserve to be able to play outside with their friends without the fear that pollution will leave them wheezing and coughing. By threatening to suspend these vital safeguards, Administrator Pruitt seems perfectly content to sacrifice our children's health at the behest of the oil and gas lobby.”
Currently, Texas lacks meaningful standards for detecting and repairing leaks, which means they rely on the protections provided by the federal pollution standards to safeguard against methane and other toxic pollution and to curb public health impacts.
Joking, right? Texans NEED federal standards to maintain their health, really? And who does the petroleum industry send to Washington, DC to end federal air standards? You guessed it, Scott Pruitt.
Running roughshod over people is corruption, plain and simple. It is also a violation of human rights to clean air and water. Roughshod also means when people value nature as a part of their own appreciation of beauty, the culture of a peaceful life is destroyed.
Right now, (click here) there are nearly 400,000 active oil and gas wells, compressor stations, and processing plants
in the state of Texas. 1Texas is also home to some of the worst methane pollution and ozone smog in
the country.
2 Each day, oil and gas activities across the state spring leaks that spew toxic pollution into
the air, like an invisible oil spill. The smog that pollution forms is beginning to verge on a public health
crisis: by 2025, Texas is expected to be the worst place in America for children who suffer from asthma
caused by pollution from oil and gas activities....
Considering the issues of Texans, one also had to consider the problems of fracking as realized in Oklahoma as well. The REGION have issues that cross state lines and cause deterioration of human rights contained in quality and right to life.
The report above was conducted with solid science.
...Oil company lobbyists (click here) routinely complain that EPA regulations are expensive and unnecessary. But Wilson said she believes the industry isn’t really concerned about high costs or red tape.
“This is an industry that just does not want any rules, and so they’re going to fight against any rule whether it’s in their best interests or not,” she said.
The report utilized Wilson’s research using infrared images to show normally invisible methane, benzene and other emissions escaping from Texas oil and gas operations.
She also documents cases of people living near these wells who experience serious health problems. But, she added, Texans need not live close by to be affected.
“The air in Denton, Texas, doesn’t stay in Denton, Texas. The air in Odessa and Midland doesn’t stay in Odessa and Midland,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t know where the city boundary is.”
A coalition of environmental groups, including Earthworks, recently filed suit seeking an injunction against Pruitt and the EPA over their plans to suspend the standards.
Why are regulations GOOD for the industry? Because they capture leaking methane that adds to the stores of the industry and more product to sell. Right? I mean containment of gas leaks is good for the industry. That is the understanding of most people who claim to understand capitalism.
mundi index to left (click here)
HOWEVER, with the falling price of oil and gas; the leaks provide an incentive to raise the price while 'commodity brokers' see a sustained or diminished supply. The entire commodity price of natural gas is skewed while people face human rights abuses with a failing quality of life.
