Group photo from the Japanese media tour of LNG facilities.

Howdy y’all!  In September we worked with journalists and politicians from three different countries to show them the realities of U.S. oil and gas production on field tours in Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.

Our Work in the Media

Propublica published a feature article based on Jack’s research on flaring and venting in the Texas oilfields. It was also published at Inside Climate News, Texas Tribune and other outlets.

“It’s a gargantuan amount of emissions,” said Jack McDonald, senior analyst of energy policy and science for the environmental group Oilfield Witness. “Because so much of this gas is methane and so much of it is either incompletely combusted or not combusted at all through the venting process, we see a huge climate impact.”

The New York Daily News published an op-ed by Sharon titled, “The world must cut damaging methane.”

“So as leaders gather at Climate Week NYC to discuss solutions, they should start there: methane emissions are required for oil and gas production, ‘clean’ natural gas is a scam, so to stop methane emissions we must stop drilling new wells.”

Anti-fracking activist, scientist and author Dr. Sandra Steingraber joined us in the Permian for the tour we conducted for a group of Mexican politicians who wanted to learn about the impacts of fracking.  She wrote about that experience:

“Wherever we went, equipment and machinery whirred and roared. Standing near a row of compressor stations was like standing on a tarmac next to a jet plane. And yet we saw very few workers during our three days of visiting various sites throughout the basin. In some cases, the equipment was clearly malfunctioning with no one on site to fix the problem. At one point, a giant plume of black smoke suddenly appeared on the horizon and blotted out the sky.”

For more on Sandra’s history of success in getting fracking banned in New York State, check out the documentary Unfractured.

Fieldwork

Mexican Delegation

In early September, Oilfield Witness collaborated with the Alianza Mexicana Contra el Fracking (AMCF) [Mexican Alliance Against Fracking] to provide a field tour of the Permian Basin to a delegation of Mexican activists and elected officials. Politicians from multiple political parties participated in the tour to learn the true cost of fracking. Currently, Mexican energy policy is deeply intertwined with the Permian Basin. Mexico imports fracked gas from the Permian to power gas plants. Mexico is the site of various proposed LNG projects that would export Permian gas through the Pacific Coast or Gulf of Mexico--this includes the controversial Saguaro LNG and pipeline project.

Sharon explains the emissions shown on the camera.

This tour comes as an important crossroads for the Mexican government: the state-owned oil company PEMEX is considering launching fracking operations in the Northeastern part of the country--while a faction of the ruling party MORENA is interested in banning the practice of fracking entirely. Sharon and Miguel teamed up with Dr Steingraber--a biologist with the Science & Environmental Health Network, and organizer who played a vital role in the successful campaign to ban fracking in the state of New York. The tour to this Mexican delegation highlighted the inevitable environmental and health impacts of fracking, and stressed the historic opportunity for the Claudia Sheinbaum administration to play a role as a global climate leader.

Dr. Steingraber presents to the Mexican delegation

Japanese Media Tour

In January Sharon and Miguel went to Japan to talk about the dangers of LNG while also documenting methane emissions from Japanese LNG import terminals. Since that trip we have continued working with Friends of the Earth Japan. This month FOE Japan Executive Director Ayumi Fukakusa joined us with four journalists from Japanese publications to tour LNG facilities on the Gulf Coast and the oilfields of the Permian.

Sharon showing methane emissions from the Cameron LNG export facility.

New Mexico Media and Activist Tour

To wrap up our month of fieldwork, Charlie went to the New Mexico Permian Basin, where he was joined by Citizens Caring for the Future (CCFF) and Interfaith Power and Light. The purpose of this trip was to provide an on-the-ground perspective for those working on bonding reform in New Mexico, highlighting the critical need for change.

During the tour, they visited numerous abandoned oil and gas sites, and unfortunately, discovered several oil spills on BLM land. Members of CCFF and New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light accompanied us, witnessing these issues firsthand.

This trip also included a reporter from *Libération* in France, who was researching abandoned sites in New Mexico. Together, we identified multiple abandoned sites actively emitting pollutants, as well as a particularly large oil spill from Poco Resources just outside of Artesia, NM.

Videos

We are still going through all of the emissions videos we captured this month but here is one of an Energy Transfer flare. Subscribe to our channel on Youtube to get all of our new videos as they are uploaded.

Education

Justin was a panelist at Climate Week for the discussion, “Halfway Through the Global Methane Pledge, Methane Emissions Are Accelerating. Can we hit the brakes?”

Constantin Zerger(head of Energy Department for Deutsche Unwelthilfe) and Justin spoke about methane emissions from oil and gas.

Our Writing

Jack wrote about how automation is replacing oilfield workers.

“Over the last few years, the prospect of AI integration has taken the oil and gas industry by storm but while this may benefit oil and gas executives and shareholders, it likely is bad news for the average worker. Major oil and gas companies have announced plans to integrate AI across their supply chains from analyzing monitoring data to generating priority lists for site visits.”

Charlie writes about his work documenting oil industry pollution in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“As Kelsey Royce, a local resident, TAARA member, and dedicated advocate for the Arkansas River and Tulsa community, eloquently stated during a 2023 city council meeting concerning water quality, "‘The absence of data isn’t the same as absence of risk.’ This sentiment underscores the critical importance of data collection and public access to information.”

Bill McKibben’s The Crucial Years highlighted Justin’s recent piece on the LNG industry.

“To understand why the White House is quite so frantic, reflect that their buddies in the oil patch know their only possible source of growth is exporting liquefied natural gas to the rest of the world, and as Justin Mikulka writes that’s looking increasingly problematic. The whole piece is well worth reading”

- Till the end of oil

The Oilfield Witness Team