Texas City’s Fracking Ban Challenged by Energy Group

The Texas city where commercial fracking was born was sued by an industry group and a state agency to overturn a local ban on the practice less than a day after voters approved it.

The suits followed yesterday’s decision by Denton voters, by an 18-point margin, to become the the first Texas municipality to enact such a prohibition.

“A ban on hydraulic fracturing is inconsistent with state law and therefore violates the Texas constitution,” the Texas Oil & Gas Association said in a statement announcing its filing at a state court in Denton. The Texas General Land Office, which oversees mineral development on state lands, filed a complaint in state court in Austin earlier today.

More than 400 measures to prevent or control fracking have been passed by U.S. cities and counties according to Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based environmental advocacy group. While New York’s highest court in June ruled that state’s municipalities can ban the practice, a voter-enacted prohibition in Longmont, Colorado, was struck down by a state court judge in July.

Fracking involves the injection of water, chemicals and sand below ground to extract oil and gas from shale formations. The process has been criticized as environmentally dangerous, even as its use has driven U.S. natural gas production to new highs.

Home to the University of North Texas, Denton sits atop the Barnett Shale, where producers first demonstrated the commercial use of drilling thousands of feet through gas-bearing rock and liberating the fuel. About 275 wells already have been drilled within the city. Most, if not all, were fracked.

The Barnett Shale formation is described in the Texas Oil & Gas Association’s complaint as a “massive reservoir of hydrocarbons” and the third-biggest onshore producing natural gas field in the U.S.

Founded in 1919

Founded in 1919, the Austin-based Texas Oil & Gas Association is a statewide group with more than 5,000 members, according to its website. Among its directors are executives of ConocoPhillips (COP), Shell Energy Resources Co. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK)

The organization asked for a ruling invalidating the ban and an order barring its enforcement, arguing the prohibition exceeds the city’s home-rule authority and intrudes on regulatory powers granted by lawmakers to the Texas Railroad Commission and Commission on Environmental Quality.

The Texas General Land Office offered a different argument: Economic development of public lands is a source of school funding. Denton’s fracking prohibition will cost schools and other state entities millions of dollars in lost revenues, according to that complaint.

The agency contends the ban is inapplicable to state properties and mineral interests.

The voter-enacted measure is scheduled to take effect on Dec. 2, according to Lindsey Baker, the city’s public information officer. Mayor Chris Watts and the city council oppose the association’s lawsuit, Baker said.

“Citizens passed this and we’re committed to defending it, just as we would any other ordinance,” Baker said today in a phone interview.

The case is Texas Oil & Gas Association v. City of Denton, 14-08933-431, Denton County, Texas, District Court (Denton).

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net; Tom Korosec in Dallas at tkorosec@texaswordworks.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg