Texas Tribune
Texas opens more coastal waters for carbon storage wells
by By Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-01 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Texas has opened over a million acres of offshore waters for companies to propose carbon sequestration projects, aiming to store greenhouse gases underground to combat climate change. This initiative, led by Texas' General Land Office, represents a significant move towards commercial deployment of carbon capture technology despite high costs and technical challenges. While the EPA has yet to permit such projects in Texas, the state's Railroad Commission seeks authority to regulate these wells. Critics warn of potential environmental risks and argue that a sustainable economic model is necessary for long-term success. The Gulf Coast's geology, emissions proximity, and state ownership favor its development as a carbon disposal hub.
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Texas has opened more than a million acres of offshore, state-owned waters for proposals from companies to inject greenhouse gas underground for permanent disposal as a means to mitigate climate change.
The request for proposals issued in June by Texas' General Land Office was its fourth since 2021 and its largest by far, opening waters in Lavaca Bay, Matagorda Bay and far southern Laguna Madre, as well as offshore from South Padre Island, Matagorda Island, Freeport and the Bolivar Peninsula.
So-called “carbon sequestration” forms an emerging pillar of U.S. climate policy. With support from the oil and gas sector, it is poised for rapid expansion, thanks to federal funding. It involves capturing carbon dioxide at industrial smokestacks, piping it to wellheads and pumping it underground instead of releasing it into the air.
“We are really now on the cusp of moving away from institutional research and more towards broad commercial deployment,” said Charles McConnell, former assistant U.S. energy secretary and the director of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston.
The practice remains expensive and technically challenging, and there are few commercial-scale examples in operation despite decades of support for the technology. Some environmentalists have warned that carbon sequestration could fail to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gases warming the planet while prolonging demand for fossil fuels.
But McConnell expects long-term demand for fossil fuels with or without carbon sequestration. Worldwide energy demand continues to grow while renewable sources have mostly supplemented fossil fuel power generation rather than replacing it. And, McConnell said, many petrochemicals like plastics can't currently be produced without fossil fuels.
He and other industry leaders foresee the Gulf Coast becoming a global hub for carbon disposal, thanks to three factors: favorable geology, proximity to industrial emissions and the simplicity of working on state-owned land. All that's missing is a revenue model.
“It's largely on the back of government subsidies. In the long term, that's not a sustainable solution,” McConnell said. “We're going to spend a lot of money to reduce emissions, and we do not have a market construct in this country that supports it.”
There's nothing new about pumping carbon dioxide underground. Petroleum producers have done it for decades to squeeze the last drops of oil out of geological formations. Injection wells are also widely used to dispose of oil and gas wastewater.
But drilling new wells for carbon dioxide disposal remains a novel practice. As such, permitting for the program is administered by the federal government via the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in all but three states.
The EPA has yet to permit the first of these so-called “Class VI” wells in Texas, but it shows 13 permit applications under review with a total of 34 wells. Of those applications, 11 are onshore, one includes offshore sequestration and one is in a coastal wetland. Another project, Bayou Bend by Chevron and TotalEnergies, calls itself the “first offshore stratigraphic well for carbon capture and storage in U.S. state waters.” But a permit application has yet to be filed with the EPA.
Texas' oilfield regulator, the Texas Railroad Commission, has requested to administer the Class VI permitting program itself, an authority the EPA has already granted to Louisiana, North Dakota and Wyoming.
“The Railroad Commission having permitting authority over Class VI wells would unleash rapid widespread commercial development of [carbon sequestration] in Texas, which is something the state is not prepared for,” said Virginia Palacios, director of Commission Shift, a Railroad Commission watchdog group.
She pointed to a petition filed this year by a coalition of Texas environmental groups alleging “numerous technical deficiencies” with the Railroad Commission's permitting of injection wells for oil and gas wastewater that have caused well blowouts, endangered water resources, triggered earthquakes and created sinkholes. In June the EPA agreed to investigate the allegations.
Also in June, seven congressional Democrats from Texas asked the EPA not to grant Texas permitting authority over carbon sequestration wells.
“This is a pivotal time to ensure permits are reviewed with great care,” the lawmakers wrote. “Surrendering authority now, especially to a state agency known for neglecting human and environmental health and safety, establishes a dangerous landscape of underregulated wells.”
A spokesperson for the Railroad Commission, Patty Ramon, said, “The Railroad Commission has decades-long history of effectively regulating various classes of injection wells to protect public safety and the environment.”
The Railroad Commission's proposed regulations for carbon sequestration wells, Ramon said, “enhance this existing framework with requirements that are tailored to the unique nature of large-scale geologic storage of carbon dioxide,” including extensive geologic testing, computer modeling, periodic reevaluations and detailed monitoring.
“Given the variety of geologic settings in which storage will be applied, the Railroad Commission is in the best position to evaluate the specifics related to well depth, geology and hydrogeology,” Ramon said.
One worry is that injected carbon could leak to the surface through other abandoned wells that perforate the formation meant to contain carbon dioxide, said Susan Hovorka, a senior research scientist with the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.
That problem can be solved by locating and plugging those nearby wells, she said. Texas' bays and near-offshore waters host hundreds of old oil and gas wells, according to a Railroad Commission data viewer.
“I had a long process convincing myself that it does work,” said Hovorka, who has studied carbon sequestration since the 1990s. “The consensus is quite strong now that this is something that needs investment.”
Researchers long ago identified the Gulf Coast as an ideal hub for carbon sequestration. The young sediment piled on the edge of the continent offers enormous, deep layers of porous sandstone that can receive tremendous volumes of carbon dioxide gas, Hovorka said.
The Gulf Coast also stretches past some of the world's most significant stationary greenhouse gas sources—the petrochemical and refinery complexes of Texas and Louisiana. That shortens the trip for captured gases to injection wells.
Furthermore, the near coastal waters all belong to a single landowner, the state, drastically simplifying the processes of identifying landowners and dividing royalties.
The National Petroleum Council, in a 2019 report to the U.S. Department of Energy, even raised the possibility of importing carbon dioxide for disposal on the Gulf Coast.
“There may also be an opportunity for the United States to market its CO2 storage resources to countries that do not have favorable geology,” said the report from the council, a presidential advisory committee composed of energy executives. “CO2 import and storage along the Gulf Coast could become a parallel market to gas exports.”
The report called carbon sequestration “essential to meeting the dual challenge of providing affordable and reliable energy while addressing the risks of climate change,” but noted that large-scale deployment “will require substantially increased support driven by national policies.”
Three years later, in 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which boosted tax credits for up to $85 per ton of carbon dioxide captured and injected underground. That legislation has allowed the sector to rapidly develop.
“There has to be an incentive structure in place provided by governments,” said Graham Bain, an analyst in Alberta, Canada, with the energy intelligence platform Enverus.
Authorities in Canada and Europe have employed “the stick,” he said, imposing penalties for carbon emissions that can be reduced through capture and sequestration. The U.S., meanwhile, has offered “the carrot”— financial credits for carbon sequestration.
If all U.S. carbon sequestration projects currently proposed were built, capacity would reach 150 million tons per year by 2027 and 375 million tons per year in 2050. That would be a small dent in the country's greenhouse-gas emissions, which topped 6 billions tons in 2022.
A long-term economic model for carbon sequestration remains unclear in the U.S. Low carbon energy from fossil fuels is going to be more expensive, and someone will have to cover the cost.
“Revenue will be critical for commercial viability,” said Kenneth Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University's Baker Institute in Houston. “Success really depends on consumers' willingness to pay for it.”
Disclosure: Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Gov. Abbott’s border wall will take around 30 years, $20B
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-03 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Governor Greg Abbott announced a state-funded border wall along Texas' Mexico border three years ago, resulting in 34 miles of steel bollards so far, at a cost of $25 million per mile. The fragmented wall faces challenges like securing land rights, with plans to cover 100 miles by 2026. Critics, including Democrats and some Republicans, argue the wall is costly and ineffective, while Abbott claims it helps combat illegal immigration. The project is part of Abbott's $11 billion border security initiative, but acquiring private land remains a significant hurdle. The wall's projected full completion could take 30 years and $20 billion.
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Three years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would take the extraordinary step of building a state-funded wall along the Mexico border, he has 34 miles of steel bollards to show for it.
That infrastructure — which has so far run up a price tag of some $25 million per mile — isn't yet a contiguous wall. It has gone up in bits and pieces spread across at least six counties on Texas' 1,254-mile southern border. Progress has been hampered by the state's struggles to secure land access, one of myriad challenges signaling a long and enormously expensive slog ahead for Abbott.
Nonetheless, state contractors have already propped up more wall mileage than former President Donald Trump's administration managed to build in Texas, and Abbott's wall project is plowing ahead at a quickened pace. State officials hope to erect a total of 100 miles by the end of 2026, at a rate of about half a mile per week. The governor frequently shares video of wall construction on social media and has credited the project with helping combat immigration flows. To date, though, steel barriers cover just 4% of the more than 800 miles identified by state officials as “in need of some kind of a barrier.” And at its current rate — assuming officials somehow persuade all private landowners along the way to turn their property over to the state — construction would take around 30 years and upwards of $20 billion to finish.
Under Abbott's direction, state lawmakers have approved more than $3 billion for the wall since 2021, making it one of the biggest items under the GOP governor's $11 billion border crackdown known as Operation Lone Star. The rest of the money is being used for items like flooding the border with state police and National Guard soldiers and transporting migrants to Democrat-controlled cities outside Texas, all of which Abbott and other Republicans say is needed to stem the historic number of migrants trying to enter the country.
Democrats and immigration advocates have cast the wall project as a taxpayer-funded pipe dream that will do nothing to address the root causes driving the immigration crisis. And they say the governor, in reviving what was once a hallmark of Trump's agenda, is using public money to boost his political stock.
Even some immigration-hawk Republicans are showing unease about the mounting costs of the wall.
“I am, too, concerned that we're spending a whole lot of money to give the appearance of doing something rather than taking the problem on to actually solve it, and until we do that, I don't expect to see much happen,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said last fall before voting in committee to spend another $1.5 billion in wall funding.
Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Acquiring land
The construction pace has largely hinged on the state's success securing rights to build the wall through privately owned borderland. Early on, the project showed little signs of life as state contractors struggled to obtain the needed easements. But things picked up last year as the state began working out more agreements covering larger tracts. Through mid-June, officials had secured 79 easements covering about 59 miles of the border, according to Mike Novak, executive director of the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the effort.
At a facilities commission meeting last month, Novak said state officials were in various stages of negotiation with landowners over another 113 miles.
“We knew from the beginning that this was going to be the choke point, you know, one of the most challenging parts of this program,” Novak said of land acquisition. “And it proved true. But we've remained steadfast.”
Officials had built 33.5 miles of wall through June 14, a facilities commission spokesperson said.
The state's ability to secure land rights has also dictated the wall's location, though officials say they have focused on areas pinpointed by the Department of Public Safety as the “highest priority.” TFC officials have declined to share exactly where the wall is being built, citing security concerns, though Novak recently said construction was underway on wall segments in Cameron, Maverick, Starr, Val Verde, Webb and Zapata counties.
Though the Texas-Mexico border spans more than 1,200 miles, Abbott's budget director, Sarah Hicks, told a Senate panel in 2022 that DPS had identified 805 miles “as vulnerable, or [that] is in need of some kind of a barrier.” Another 180 miles are covered by natural barriers, mostly in the Big Bend region of West Texas, while existing barriers already cover another 140 miles, according to state officials.
Novak has said the pace of building about half a mile of wall per week is expected to continue for the “foreseeable future.” At that rate, about 100 miles would go up every four years, with the full 805 miles covered sometime after 2050, when Abbott would be in his 90s.
The earliest wall construction has cost roughly $25 million to $30 million per mile, according to TFC officials. That would amount to $20 billion to $24 billion for the entire 805-mile span, or about three times the cost of paying every Texas public university student's tuition last year. The estimate does not account for the cost of maintaining the wall once it is built, which TFC estimates will cost around $500,000 per mile each year.
Lubbock state Sen. Charles Perry, who last year carried Texas' new immigration law that allows state police to arrest people for illegally crossing the Mexico border, is another Republican who has expressed concern about the wall's cost.
“I am for border security. I am not against a wall. But to me, at least from what I can tell, it is a perpetual circle. We're on the hamster wheel,” Perry said last fall as he prepared to vote for the $1.5 billion wall funding bill. “[At some point] the response has not to be more money for infrastructure. At some point this state must draw the line in the sand.”
Still, no Texas Republican has voted against border wall funding. Lawmakers approved nearly $2.5 billion for the effort in the state's current two-year budget — more than was allotted in state funds to all but a handful of state agencies, and more than twice what Texas spends on its court and juvenile justice systems.
State Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston, said she doesn't think Texas' GOP leadership “really understands why people are crossing in the first place.”
“Spending billions of dollars on a wall really does not address the root causes of the migration that's happening,” said Morales, who is vice chair of the House's Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “What we should be investing in is our education, our health care, real solutions for problems that are happening right now in Texas.”
Since 2021, federal officials have recorded an average of about 2 million illegal border crossings a year, a record that Abbott has attributed to President Joe Biden for rolling back some of Trump's border policies. The governor has touted the wall construction as a way for Texas to “address the border crisis while President Biden has sat idly by.” Biden and other Democrats have blamed Republicans for shooting down a sweeping bipartisan border deal earlier this year.
The scope of Texas' wall construction — and Abbott's broader border security efforts — are unprecedented in nature, as the federal government is generally responsible for immigration enforcement and the costs associated with it.
Even with the state's improved pace securing easements, Novak has said land access remains the biggest challenge for the project, and “it'll probably remain that way through most of the program.” The Trump administration encountered the same issue after the former president famously said he would build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. Even using the federal government's power to seize some borderland, Trump's administration built just 21 miles of new wall along the Texas-Mexico border.
The painstaking negotiations are required for Texas' wall because lawmakers barred the use of eminent domain to gain land access.
Last year, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, filed legislation to change that, arguing TFC officials could only build a complete wall if they were authorized to use eminent domain powers. The proposal failed to make it through the Senate, though Creighton said he plans to file it again for the session that starts next January.
“Of course, we can continue to negotiate with ranchers, but that is a very slow process,” Creighton said. “And it's an incomplete process, because there will always be holdouts for different reasons.”
Creighton, one of the upper chamber's more conservative members, said he still supports using state funds to build a border wall, even as some of his GOP colleagues have raised objections.
“I say no to waste, inefficiencies, potential fraud and unreasonable spending as much as any member,” Creighton said. “But … there are times, with all of that fiscal conservatism, that we have to use the money that we save efficiently to protect Texans and Texas.”
“A difficult and complex task”
Most border wall advocates acknowledge barriers alone will not deter people from trying to enter the country illegally. But they say a wall would work if paired with more law enforcement officers and technology, arguing it would slow down attempted crossers to give border agents more time to apprehend them and encourage migrants to seek asylum via ports of entry.
But smuggling gangs have used ordinary power tools to saw through parts of Trump's wall and scaled it using disposable ladders. Some immigration experts say border walls fail to solve the underlying factors driving people to migrate, such as the poverty, violence and political upheaval in Central America, Haiti and Venezuela that is driving millions to flee and straining U.S. resources at the border.
“Walls do not achieve the objectives for which they are said to be erected; they have limited effects in stemming insurgencies and do not block unwanted [migrant] flows, but rather lead to a re-routing of migrants to other paths,” wrote Élisabeth Vallet of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in a 2022 report.
Those sorts of objections have done nothing to deter Abbott and GOP lawmakers, who are armed with a huge budget surplus and polling that shows a majority of Texas voters support the state's wall effort and overall border spending. More than 90% of Republican voters support the wall, with 74% voicing “strong” support, according to an April poll by the Texas Politics Project.
With construction plunging ahead, Novak has projected confidence about the wall's status, pointing to the recent progress after an initial slow start, which saw officials build less than 2 miles in the 12 months after Abbott announced the effort.
It's not just land access that complicates wall construction, Novak said at the June TFC meeting, where he ticked off a list of other factors: changing soil conditions that require “complicated engineering solutions”; steering clear of irrigation systems when building on agricultural land; weather; and “sensitivity” to cattle, oil and gas and hunting operations.
“It's a difficult and complex task, at best,” Novak said. “But with that said, we're whipping it. The latest stats reflect what I like to call just steadfast progress.”
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Biden administration proposes rule to prevent heat injuries
by By Asad Jung, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 17:27:33
SUMMARY: The Biden-Harris administration proposed a rule to protect workers from extreme heat, following increased heat-related hazards for Texas employees like construction workers and cooks. The rule mandates employers to create plans preventing heat injuries, ensuring water access, rest breaks, and controlling indoor heat. Rep. Greg Casar, advocating for a federal heat standard, supports the proposal, anticipating its finalization by next summer. This rule follows Texas' HB 2127, which eliminated local ordinances for mandatory water breaks. Climate change has intensified heat in Texas, leading to record temperatures and deadly outcomes. At least 300 people died from heat in Texas last year, highlighting the need for protective measures.
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Above-normal high temperatures in recent summers have been outright dangerous for construction workers, kitchen cooks and other Texas employees who may be at risk for hazardous heat exposure.
But some relief may be on the way after the Biden-Harris administration announced a proposed rule Tuesday that aims to protect millions of workers from the risks of extreme heat.
The rule would require employers to develop a plan to prevent heat injuries and illnesses in workplaces and make sure their employees can access drinking water, get rest breaks and control indoor heat. It would apply to all employers conducting indoor or outdoor work in construction, agriculture and other sectors where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has jurisdiction.
Before going into effect, OSHA must publish the proposal publicly and establish a period to collect public input.
“In many ways, this decades-long fight in Texas is helping expand workers' rights nationwide,” said U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, who has advocated for a federal workplace heat standard and rest and water breaks in Texas.
Casar led a thirst strike at the U.S. Capitol a year ago to draw attention to the issue. Casar hopes the Biden administration's proposed rule will be finalized by next summer.
The proposed federal requirements come a year after Texas legislators passed House Bill 2127, which barred cities and counties from passing local ordinances that go further than state law in several areas — from labor and finance to agriculture and natural resources.
HB 2127 eliminated ordinances in Austin and Dallas that established mandatory water breaks for construction workers. Supporters of the law said those kinds of ordinances bogged down businesses and created inconsistent standards across the state.
Climate change driven by humans burning fossil fuels is pushing temperatures higher in Texas. Last year was the hottest on record in the state. The state climatologist expects average temperatures and the number of triple-digit days will continue to rise.
Heat is deadly. It's known as a silent killer because its impacts are more nuanced than a tornado or a fire. But heat kills more people than any other type of weather, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. At least 300 people died in Texas last year from the heat, more than in any other year on record. Most of the deaths happened in populous metro regions, like Houston and Dallas Fort-Worth, as well as in border regions.
“We know that temperatures will continue to go up. So these protections need to be in place,” said Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO.
Emily Foxhall contributed to this story.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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U.S. Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate’s petition
by By Pooja Salhotra, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 14:51:35
SUMMARY: The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the murder case of Rodney Reed, who has maintained innocence for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. Convicted in 1998, Reed's guilt has been questioned with accusations aimed at Stites' fiancé, Jimmy Fennell. Although Texas halted Reed's execution in 2019 for further review, the courts denied a new trial. However, the Supreme Court allowed Reed to pursue DNA testing on crime scene evidence. Reed's attorneys continue to fight for justice, asserting his innocence. Meanwhile, Stites' family insists on Reed's guilt. Both Reed and Fennell have faced accusations of sexual assaults.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to give Rodney Reed the chance to have his murder case reviewed, delivering a blow to the death row inmate who has for more than a quarter century maintained that he is innocent of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites.
Reed, a Black man, was convicted in 1998 of killing a 19-year-old white woman in the Central Texas town of Bastrop. For years, Reed's guilt has been questioned, with his supporters pointing blame at Stites' fiance, Jimmy Fennell.
In 2019, Texas' highest criminal court halted Reed's execution, sending the case back to the trial court for further review. But a district judge ruled against granting Reed a new trial in 2021, and two years later the state's highest criminal court also rejected Reed's claims of innocence.
Without offering any comment, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Reed's petition for a writ of certiorari, which would have ordered the lower court to deliver the case records to the higher court for review.
The ruling does not mean that Reed's execution will immediately be scheduled. In another appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court last year sided with Reed, who is now 56, and cleared the way for his team to pursue DNA testing on crime scene evidence that his attorney's said could exonerate him.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in that case in August, Reed's legal team said.
“[Reed] has litigation pending in several courts and his legal team is continuing to pursue all available avenues to secure his relief,” said Parker Rider-Longmaid, an attorney representing Reed. “Mr. Reed's legal fight to test key DNA evidence and prove his innocence is far from over.”
Reed's attorneys maintain that their client was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. They say that Reed was having an affair with Stites and that the courts have not allowed for DNA testing of crucial evidence, including the belt used to strangle Stites.
Stites' sister, Debra Oliver, meanwhile, said that Reed is guilty and should accept responsibility for the crime.
“It is time to stop retraumatizing Stacey's loved ones for the benefit of activists and those seeking notoriety from this nightmare,” the statement said.
Oliver also said that Reed is guilty of raping her sister, who she says had no romantic relationship with Reed.
Both Reed and Stites' fiance have been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Reed was indicted in several rape cases. Fennell spent 10 years in prison after he kidnapped and allegedly raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in 2007.
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