Tracking the players in the ever-growing energy and environmental world.
The benchmark price of U.S. crude hovers around $85 a barrel. That’s lower than it’s been in four years and $15 below where it was a year ago. Here are a few reasons why: Economic growth has stalled internationally – This has slowing the demand for oil, but oil supplies are increasing thanks to the shale boom in [...]
Crude oil is now trading at roughly $13 a barrel less than it did a year ago. That’s in spite of the seizure of Iraqi and Syrian oil facilities by ISIS and a U.S.-led bombing campaign against those facilities. “The beginning of the bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq recently was met with a big [...]
Economists made a surprising discovery when they measured the economic impact of oil & gas drilling in Texas. For the past four years, Thomsas Tunstall and a team of economists at University of Texas-San Antonio have been measuring the economic impact of surging oil & gas drilling in the rock formation called the Eagle Ford [...]
“I think it is worth asking ourselves as a society how much longer we think we need to have an oil economy.” — Michael Webber, UT Energy Institute This week in New York, the UN Climate Summit is underway, and the Rockefeller Foundation made news with the announcement that it will divest close to a billion dollars from fossil [...]
The Railroad Commission of Texas will meet Monday morning to consider an issue of huge importance to landowners across Texas. It has to do with how the state oversees energy companies that need access to private land. At issue at the hearing will be pipelines for oil & gas. But there are other land use issues emerging in [...]
The Texas Department of Transportation gave an update Wednesday on their current measures to repair damaged rural roads in the Eagle Ford Shale. During a Texas Senate Transportation Committee on Transportation hearing, TxDOT highlighted a $500-million solution enacted by the state to rehabilitate damaged roads linked to heavy oil and gas related traffic in the [...]
From Houston Public Media: State Highway 72 cuts through the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas. The two-lane artery links oil boomtowns like Kenedy and Tilden to the Three Rivers Valero refinery. Local residents call the highway “Death Row.” “Every week someone dies, just about,” says Steve Alaniz, a construction manager based [...]
Sometime this winter, an historic sea vessel will float into Galveston. But you won’t be able to take a tour of it. In fact, you probably won’t be allowed to get close to it. Because the big barge is radioactive. A half century ago, the U.S. Army came up with what sounded like a great [...]
A growing Texas economy means thousands more rail cars are needed to keep up with the increasing flow of oil, petrochemicals and other goods. But the challenge is to find a suitable place to build huge rail yards that can cover hundreds of acres and handle thousands of rail cars a day. Since 2009, one [...]
If it seems like you’re spending more time in Houston stuck waiting at railroad crossings, there’s a reason. Compared to just five years ago, there are hundreds of thousands more railcars crisscrossing Texas. Demand from the oil & gas industry is a big factor. To keep up, railroad companies are building more tracks. But not [...]
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