Texas Oil and Gas Companies Drill With River Water During Extreme Drought – Inside Climate News
Oil and gas companies have used billions of gallons of Rio Grande and Pecos River water for drilling in the past four years, according to an exclusive Inside Climate News analysis.
Billions of gallons were contaminated during the “extreme drought,” and for what? Cheap fuel. Only it’s not cheap. The price at the pump doesn’t include anything for the harm done in making that fuel or by burning it.
Paul Krugman’s 5-13-25 column provides a key insight into the relationship between renewable energy and fossil energy. Renewables are competitive, even when we don’t take into account the hidden subsidies society provides fossil fuels by tolerating the externalized environmental damage. If a driller can’t get at least $60 a barrel for oil produced, it doesn’t pay to drill. Gas has a similar threshold of profitability. So when the energy industry waxes poetic about the benefits of drilling, look for the dodge and the gimme. The driller needs a premium price for the energy he mines. And the cost of renewables will continue to drop.
In the case of shale, it’s all about prices. Drilling new shale wells is expensive. In fact, Trump’s vision of drastically lower oil prices never made any sense, because any large drop in oil prices would make new shale wells unprofitable. And since production from any given shale well drops quickly over time, anything that caused new drilling to fall substantially would quickly translate into declining oil production.
How low would prices have to go to shrink the U.S. oil industry? Recently the Dallas Fed did a survey which suggested that drilling in many major fields would stop if the price per barrel fell below the low 60s:
And that was before Trump’s tariffs raised costs, so the critical price is probably higher now. And guess what: oil prices right now are at a level where we can expect production to fall. Here are oil futures:
Source: Bloomberg
Why did oil get cheap? Look at the sudden drop on April 2, aka Liberation Day, when Trump first announced extreme tariffs. It’s obvious that oil prices are down thanks to pessimism about the global economy, which in turn is tied to Trump’s trade war. And by the way, that war is by no means over. A new analysis by the Yale Budget Lab finds that the damaging effects of Trump’s tariffs are only modestly mitigated by his surrender to China.
And as for renewables: Trump hates them, wind power in particular. He offers crazy justifications for that hatred — did you hear about his claim that offshore wind farms kill whales? — but it’s pretty clear that he has been nursing an irrational grudge ever since he was unable to stop a Scottish wind farm that he thought ruined the view from a golf course he owns.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure that MAGA types in general dislike renewable energy because they don’t consider it manly.
So what will be the economy-boosting effects of drill, baby, drill? Nil, baby, nil.
No regard for the obstacles deservedly placed in the path of businesses that exploit natural resources. It is all about commerce and profits. The greater public good is a distant priority.
GOP Advances Bill to Fast-Track Fracking, Logging and Mining on Public Lands
The legislation would make it harder to file legal challenges against controversial mines and pipelines.
Footnote: The source of the above article is Truthout, an extremely left-biased source. Although they don’t usually publish lies, they do omit context and considerations that tend to favor the right.
Wright’s critics see his views on global warming as a dangerous and self-serving misinterpretation of climate science. In their view, the fundamental role of fossil fuels in modern life is precisely the problem. Without a rapid shift to other energy sources, humanity risks undoing the types of progress Wright and his allies love to celebrate.
Don’t call it ‘climate denial,’ Secretary of Energy Chris Wright claims he’s preaching ‘climate realism’
As a Denver-based fracking executive, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright honed a message on global warming: yes, it’s real, but it’s a manageable side effect of modern life.
More and cheaper fossil fuel is the wrong direction to take. The damage caused by the use of fossil fuels and products made from them is conveniently externalized. Gas and oil are cheap because the user does not pay for the life-cycle cost, only for the initial production and distribution costs. And, in many hidden ways, the production cost is subsidized. Though he doesn’t mean it this way, true “climate realism” would assess the full life cycle cost of the fuel and include that as a penalty tax. But how do you price loss of coastline, extinction of species, wildfires, floods, and extreme weather? What’s the value of the casualties, what could compensate the child with asthma?
We aren’t even sure that humanity will survive what’s coming.
The article below is presented as an example of propaganda produced to promote fossil fuel interests. The charged language, attacks on people instead of issues, lack of evidence all should be a tip-off. And your skepticism is confirmed by Media Bias Fact Check, and organization that holds sources accountable by checking facts and tracking the integrity with which they report. Here’s what they say about Townhall the source of the article:
Overall, we rate Townhall Right Biased and Questionable based on consistent one-sided reporting that always favors the right and numerous failed fact checks.
Senator Dave McCormick wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times that says, “The more I travel across the Commonwealth, the more convinced I become of the potential Pennsylvania has to guide America’s energy future. Philadelphia Gas Works is working to export LNG through the Port of Philadelphia. Penn America Energy and the Pennsylvania Building Trades are collaborating on a $7 billion project to build a new LNG export terminal along the Delaware River in Eddystone.”
It’s a bad idea for many reasons, both economic, global, and local. The reason energy interests want the terminal is to exploit foreign markets. Natural gas can be burned or made into plastics and chemicals. If burned, it contributes to global climate change. Plastics are polluting everything because we don’t have practical ways of recycling them. So whatever happens to the gas we liquify and sell, those who profit don’t pay the long-term costs; society does.
The social economics are bad too. Cheap fossil fuels compete with renewable, non-polluting energy. So their availability hinders the growth of sustainable energy production.
Then there are the pipelines. They create long, deep scars across the landscape and introduce the risk of leaks and disasters to the neighborhoods they traverse. The pumping stations vent substantial amounts of gas, and create other damage to the neighborhoods where they are located.
Last but not least is fracking. Overseas markets increase demand and bring higher prices, which encourages more drilling. We’ve extensively documented that nothing good comes to locals from fracking.
Senator McCormick is only telling half the story, the rosy half. He’s left it to the rest of us to tell the whole story and reveal the truth. You get all the facts right and still mislead people.
The shale gas propaganda and disinformation folks are at it again. They claim that New York State families could get $27,000 a year in income from gas production if the state had not banned it. But what they don’t mention is the damage to the local environment, the health of the kids, not to mention the terrible cost of climate change. The massive cost of wildfires, epic weather events, and coastal flooding are all “externals” not to be discussed.
It’s not surprising that the Heritage Foundation is the source. They spawn many of the bad ideas that plague America today.
While oil companies continue to extract petroleum from the ground, taking a step back, the health of the carbon extraction industry is not particularly strong. Since 2021, the 5 largest independent oil majors (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total) have been in the habit of sending more money back to shareholders than they are developing new business. This is a sign that the corporate brass is less interested in the long-term future of the firm than in extracting value from the present. Even more interesting is the oil majors’ reserves, which in many cases are depleting to less than 10 years: BP has 7.2 years of reserves left, while Chevron has 8.03 and Shell has 9.27 years. Exxon Mobil (12.4 years) and Total (12.6 years) are the only firms that have more than a decade’s worth of juice in the ground, which implies that the business is a sunset industry.
“Because the majority of Ohioans rely on groundwater for their drinking water, the threat of fracking byproducts, like radioactive brine, seeping into their drinking water supplies is not a small one. For example, in Athens County, fracking-produced brine has been found migrating over a mile away from its source since 2019 — inching its way toward groundwater drinking wells. The migratory activity of fracking byproducts makes fracking a statewide concern, including in Southwest Ohio.
“If just one aquifer is poisoned in Ohio from migrating radioactive gas and oil waste brine, it could affect the drinking water for tens of thousands people who rely on well water for drinking,” Zemper said.
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The fractured future of Ohio: Current fracking legislation’s statewide implications on natural areas
New Ohio legislation could expand fracking in state parks and public natural areas, raising concern from Miami University students and organizations across the state.
Pennsylvania Health Advocates Say Gov. Shapiro Has Let Residents Down on Fracking Protections – Inside Climate News
Public health advocates assessing Josh Shapiro’s first two years as Pennsylvania’s governor concluded that he hasn’t done enough to protect residents from the damaging effects of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas—despite charting a roadmap for such actions almost five years ago while he was attorney general. Environmental Health Project (EHP), a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, said Shapiro […]
