Smog. A lot of it
lately. Almost every time I drive in the Texas Big Bend country I see less
blue, less mountain.
By chance I got a
call from Texas Sharon of Earthworks. “Wanna go for a drive?” She
asked. We head toward Balmorhea in her Dodge with Wilma Subra, a
renowned chemist, filmmaker Joe Cashiola and Sharon’s FLIR video
camera that makes visible the invisible air pollution coming from
oil&gas facilities. We’re looking for leaks. Smog makers.
Methane.
The shale play
region around Balmorhea State Park, known as the Alpine High, is the
most active fossil fuel hunt in the world right now. John Christman,
CEO of Apache Corp., pledged to his shareholders last year he’d
spend two billion dollars in 2017 exploring there for oil & gas.
$2B is a lot of combustion.
Sharon stops the
Dodge on the side of Highway 17, 30 miles south of Pecos and focuses
the FLIR lens toward an oil well tank battery that seemed benign but
in the camera’s black&white monitor we see clouds of gas rise
from the tanks. “See that one,” she points. “Not only is it
venting through the pipe but the top of the tank is leaking too.”
The Texas Commission
on Environmental Quality (TECQ) allows up to 25 tons of Volatile
Organic Compounds (VOC’s) to be released from existing sources
yearly. This allows harmful gases from hydrocarbon production
including ethylacetate, hexane, and 2-butanone to vent into the
atmosphere, adding to the Green House Effect, that human induced
phenomena that keeps heat trapped in our atmosphere creating global
warming. Sharon is sure that most sources in Texas exceed this yearly
limit. And that quantity does not even include methane aka natural
gas. Unlike Colorado and some other hydrocarbon producing states,
methane, in Texas is unregulated. “But the real problem,” she
said. “Is they’re not even monitoring. I’ve sent them clips of
leaking gas but seldom do they take action.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality production permits allow many other air pollutants such as nitrous
oxide to be released which combined with VOC’s and sunlight create
the ozone smog we see on the horizon.”
We look toward the
Davis Mountains but they are not there.
This year the State
of Texas cut the TECQ air pollution budget by $20million per year
guaranteeing an even more passive approach to air pollution. Oil&Gas
doesn’t seem to like regulation, moreover enforcement. And with
Governor Abbott leading this charge, motivated perhaps by half
million dollar campaign contributions from the likes of pipeline giant Kelcy Warren – what can we expect, ethical behavior? Or
should we rejoice in behavior deemed legal by rich lawyers in office
conjuring for their oil&gas buddies?
We drive north and
scope another tank battery. All leaking, all venting. Then we check a
flare, from a distance - the roar of pressure pushes the base of the
flame 20 feet from the top of the flare stack.
“That one relieves
pressure directly from the underground formation,” Subra said. The
flare next to it black smokes but mildly pyrographic compared to the
devil next to it.
We turn down another
road and watch through the FLIR camera monitor another set of tanks
off-gassing. With the methane comes carcinogens including toluene,
benzene, and sulfuric acid. If you’re unfortunate enough to live in
the vicinity of oil&gas production, common health effects include
respiratory impacts, sinus problems, throat irritation, allergies,
fatigue, eye and nasal irritation, breathing difficulties, vision
impairment, severe headaches, swollen joints, and sleep disturbances.
We stop now at a
frack on a Rosetta Corporation wellhead. Fracks are generally a 3 day
operation. Ten million gallons of water are lost to the hydro-logic
cycle forever. Five hundred tons of special sand along
with blends of various “proprietary” chemicals including diesel,
pesticides, detergents, solvents, and carcinogens like benzyl
chloride, formaldehyde, and napthalene are mixed into the fracking
solutions.
Trucks smoked as
they lined up in a snaky half mile queue ready to discharge their goo
into the crevices of our earth.
“They’re going
to frack tonight Joe,” I whisper in Joe’s ear as if conscience
will be struck from all moral codes for the next few hours.
Eight thousand miles
away, a New York Times article reports this week, that a laboratory
off the Tasmanian coast is monitoring our air, air that should be
some of the cleanest on the planet as it sweeps across thousands of
miles of ocean.
It appears, however,
according to the article by Justin Gillis, that over the last two
years atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations, the No.1 source of the Green
House Effect, have accelerated. Consequently global warming/climate
change, will accelerate, and Mother Nature may become Mother Strange.
The NYT article suggests
that the natural sponges, likes trees and oceans have been absorbing
much fossil-fuel generated CO2 over the years of the industrial age
but are now saturated. And methane, 80 times more powerful as a
greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide over a twenty year period, flows like no
tomorrow in the once pristine area of the Big Bend.
We climb back in the
Dodge now. I have a headache. There is less talk. We head back to
Marfa, as the mountains, cleft and everlasting, slowly re-emerge
through the smog.
