News from October
Howdy, yall! We had another busy month which started in Louisiana, included two trips to the Texas Permian and along the way Sharon joined a panel discussion in Germany on LNG and fracking as the “Gründerin von Oilfield Witness aus Texas.”
Meet Miguel!
The Equation Campaign published Miguel’s story that explains what led him to this work after his earlier plans to become an immigration lawyer.
“When I look through the OGI camera, I see what is all too often invisible to our naked eyes: not only the pollution created by the oil and gas industry but the inequality of our society too.”
Our Work in the Media
Inside Climate News published an article on the failures of Texas regulators at the TCEQ to respond to the fracking boom and hold the industry accountable for its pollution and featured former TCEQ team leader Tim Doty.
“It’s all smoke and mirrors,” said Tim Doty, a former mobile monitoring team leader who spent 28 years at the TCEQ. “They’ve convinced the [state Legislature] and the general public that they’re actually doing something of value when it couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The article also quoted our own Jack McDonald.
“As far as I know, TCEQ has never done anything to acknowledge either a problem with H2S in the Permian or the results of these mobile monitoring reports,” said Jack McDonald, a research assistant at Oilfield Witness and co-author of a 2022 report on hydrogen sulfide in Texas.
New Report: Unmonitored and Unregulated
We work with Tim Doty and he collaborated with Jack and the rest of us on our new report, Unmonitored and Unregulated: How Texas Ignores Oilfield Pollution. Our report highlights the ongoing risks from oilfield pollution to frontline communities by reviewing TCEQ’s limited air monitoring data from the Permian and recommends expanding air monitoring across all of Texas.
One of the issues the report highlights is the risks of hydrogen sulfide pollution. Justin wrote about the alarming number of recent stories highlighting hydrogen sulfide pollution.
Fieldwork
Sharon and Miguel joined a production crew from NHK TV from Japan. NHK is telling the story of how Japanese banks are funding LNG development in the U.S. and across the globe with the goal of educating the Japanese public that the LNG they are told is clean energy, is far from clean. While they were there, we witnessed some of the worst methane pollution we’ve ever seen.
Oil Change International has documented how Japan is funding gas production and LNG exports in the U.S. and we were joined by OCI’s Susanne Wong on this trip and her expertise was on the topic was a great addition to the trip for all involved.
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Sharon and Miguel also gave a tour of Permian methane emissions to the Permian Gulf Coast Coalition. Much of the gas that is produced in West Texas is headed to the Gulf Coast for export. |
Optical Gas Imaging Video
On our most recent trip to West Texas, we captured video of blowdowns where methane was being dumped directly into the atmosphere.
Halloween
Miguel dressed up as the carbon lifecycle. From dinosaur to Rig Daddy.
Follow us on Bluesky for daily updates on methane news.
@oilfieldwitness.bsky.social
- Till the end of oil
The Oilfield Witness Team