The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) is the government agency charged with regulating Texas' Oil and Gas industry. Knowing what we know about
regulations and regulators in the oil and gas industries of other states, when they say something most people look at it with a roll of the eyes. The TRC has come out and said that
recent earthquake activity is not connected to
fracking:
An inquiry by the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas has found that oil and gas activity did not likely cause a swarm of earthquakes around the north Texas towns of Azle and Reno starting in 2013. The finding, however, flies in the face of a peer-reviewed scientific study of the quakes.
This study, out of Southern Methodist University, had linked recent earthquake activity with ExxonMobile's subsidiary fracking company XTO's drilling activities.
The SMU team also is studying an ongoing series of earthquakes in the Irving-Dallas area that began in April 2014.
In both the DFW sequence and the Cleburne sequence, the operation of injection wells used in the disposal of natural gas production fluids was listed as a possible cause of the seismicity. The introduction of fluid pressure modeling of both industry activity and water table fluctuations in the Azle study represents the first of its kind, and has allowed the SMU team to move beyond assessment of possible causes to the most likely cause identified in this report.
One of the report's points was that more science needed to be performed in order to make informed decisions on public safety policy.
“This report points to the need for even more study in connection with earthquakes in North Texas,” said Brian Stump, SMU’s Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences. “Industry is an important source for key data, and the scope of the research needed to understand these earthquakes requires government support at multiple levels.”
The oil and gas industry's initial response came from people like Yosemite Sam's cousin T. Boone Pickens who said we just know about the earthquakes now and we didn't pay attention to them before so stop being a bunch of nerds and sissies. Well, let's be fair, the Texas Railroad Commission is our government regulator and it has probably looked at other scientific evidence:
But at the hearing, agency examiners weighed that study against the evidence put on the record. XTO was the only party that offered direct evidence, and examiners found in favor of an XTO well located near Azle and Reno. [...]
The Railroad Commission has a staff seismologist, but he did not participate in the hearing.
[Bold my emphasis.]
There's good news and bad news. The hearing can have an appeal. The bad news: they didn't invite anybody who might want to appeal.
Parties in the hearing have a couple weeks to object to the agency’s findings, but the only parties were XTO and the Railroad Commission itself.
Wow. The Texas Railroad Commission is made up of three commissioners who are elected officials, who campaign and
are allowed to take money from the oil and gas industry for their campaigns. Read that last sentence back to yourself and then listen quietly as my eyes roll.
Here's some more information about the Texas Railroad Commission from their agency's review from a few years ago:
According to the Sunset Advisory Commission s review of the Texas Railroad Commission, the railroad commission pursues enforcement action in a very small percentage of the thousand of violations inspectors identify each year. [...]
Out of the tens of thousands of violations in 2001, 488 compliance actions were taken. Those actions resulted in just 13 fines totaling $267,750.
Those were loosey goosey times back in 2001.
However, the numbers show the problem is getting worse. Last year, out of the 80,000 oil and gas production-related violations, there were just 469 compliance actions taken by the commission. Not a single penalty or fine was assessed.
For the entire decade, only 64 penalties have been assessed to pipeline operators, with fines totaling less than $500,000.
That's through 2010. Here's the
New York Times talking about the commission's strange outdated technology, and how they're attacking things since the scathing report—
two years ago:
In the first quarter of fiscal 2013, the Railroad Commission says, its inspectors found about 13,500 alleged violations, including 163 major ones, but assessed total penalties of just $177,475.
Listen. That sound you hear are my eyes rolling over and over and over again.