Reporting and commentary on the Texas energy industry and innovations shaping its future
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott scored a victory over the EPA this week over when a federal appeals court ordered the federal agency to take more time to consider Texas's pollution control measures.
Landowners who vehemently oppose TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline took to the streets and the courts to protest the project.
What lies beneath the hood of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company?
The author of Private Empire: ExxonMobile and American Power answers the question: In terms of difficulty, how would you compare reporting on Exxon with the reporting you did for your previous book, The Bin Ladens?
In 1996 a powerful South Texas ranching clan accused ExxonMobil of sabotaging wells on the family’s property. Thirteen years, millions of dollars in legal fees, and one state Supreme Court opinion later, the biggest oil field feud of its time is still raging.
The New Yorker writer talks about his latest book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
Forget the Outer Continental Shelf. There’s a good old-fashioned boom happening in Midland, thanks to a crafty drilling technique that unlocked the secret reserves of the Permian Basin and revived the late, great West Texas oilman.
The BP oil spill hit the small world of Houston’s oil and gas business hard. So now that the well is plugged, who’s up and who’s down?
Skip Hollandsworth talks about rigs, the trickle-down effect, and the new generation of oilmen.
Oil patch old-timers said to stay away from the Austin chalk. But a few feisty newcomers refused to listen and cashed in for millions.
Midland’s energy companies are still laying people off a decade after the bottom of the bust. But—surprise—the city’s economy is booming again.
Thirty years ago, people couldnt believe it: The old man’s elixir boosted crops, ate up sewage, and made the desert bloom. Today half a dozen Texas companies claim the elixir does all that and a whole lot more.
Why does a rich Houston investment banker spend his days traveling the globe, preaching to the uninformed and indifferent that the world’s supply of crude oil is in steep decline and the end of life as we know it is very, very near? Maybe because it is.
Amarillo
After James and Linda Rowe were killed in a grisly refinery explosion in Texas City in 2005, their wild-child daughter could have taken a modest settlement and started to rebuild her life in a small Louisiana border town. Instead, she chose to fight—and brought a multibillion-dollar oil company to its
Offshore drillers are finding mammoth reservoirs in places that were once considered barren, which is why the Gulf of Mexico is booming again.
The moral of Tex Moncrief’s story: Father knew best.
If the crash that followed the boom hasn’t exactly been our fault, the result has been that same sad sense that maybe we’ll never have fun again.
Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have given us a natural gas boom—and a whole lot of questions.
A Disney cruise set sail from Galveston under new a deal that is “guaranteed to create a minimum of $2.4 million in gross revenue for the Port of Galveston.”
Should nonproducing oil rigs be demolished, or are the habitats marine life have built around them too valuable to compromise?
With $452.9 billion in revenue and profits surging to $41.1 billion, the Irving-based company reclaimed the number one spot from Walmart.
A new study looking at West Texas wind farms found that local air temperatures rose 0.72 degrees Celsius. Is this something to worry about?
If oil and gas drilling is considered "manufacturing" instead of "mining," the industry effectively receives a huge tax exemption.
The Supreme Court rejected the ex-Enron CEO's latest appeal, a move that is hardly surprising to most Houstonians.
A dispatch on how the petrodollars from the Eagle Ford Shale boom are reshaping life in South Texas.
Blockbuster shuts down one-third of its locations, international business out of Texas goes gangbusters, and home prices increase in San Antonio and Houston.
The Republican congressman from Tyler says an oil pipeline radiates heat, making it a popular "date" destination for caribou.
A hedge fund scandal revolves around Dell, AT&T turns its gaze on Dish Network, and Houston executives rake it in.
The EPA announced new mercury emissions rules that please environmentalists, but the timeline and potential price tag worries industry officials.
The EPA issued a draft report last week linking fracking to groundwater contamination, but this did not cool the industry’s support of the practice.
The feds have postponed their decision on whether to add the dunes sagebrush lizard to the endangered species list until mid-2012.
As the state gets hotter, one former Midland resident thinks air conditioning should be required by the city building code.
As hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking) has unlocked untold reserves of natural gas, it has also unleashed a wave of concerns about pollution and, for one family in the Barnett Shale, a long nightmare.
From the old-style models to the three-story turbines, windmills are a part of Texas history. The machine's evolution is on display in Lubbock at the world's largest windmill museum.
The unlikely story of how a handful of dreamers, schemers, and (all too often) failures made oil-and-gas-rich Texas the leading wind power state in the country.
T. Boone Pickens’s office cabinet.
Amid all the drink tickets, bikini-clad hostesses, and outrageous displays of wealth at the world’s largest expo for independent oilmen, I was determined to get some answers about the future of the business.
On October 27, 1900, an Austrian-born mining engineer named Anthony F. Lucas spudded in an oil well on a hill near Beaumont. He’d drilled a previous well in the vicinity to a depth of 575 feet before running out of money and giving up, but this time he’d secured financing
Buying into energy efficiency, one electric bill at a time.
Our most iconic oil and gas man, lately a water marauder and now a celebrated windcatter, has saved himself a couple of times in his eighty glorious years. Who’s to say he can’t save America?
Jim Atkinson changes out his insulation.
Wayland grew up in Midland and has worked in the oil industry for nearly a decade. He is now a mud engineer for Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids in Victoria.When I was growing up in Midland, I didn’t want anything to do with the oil field. In junior high, you learn
(See “The Gospel According to Matthew,” to read the story.)
Executive editor S. C. Gwynne on researching the energy industry and writing about coal plants.
Facing an energy crisis, Texas is on the verge of a solution that will belch about five billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the next forty years. Breathe deeply—while you still can.
“The record’s clean. I’m sure that I haven’t done everything that everyone would like me to do. But I’ve never hurt anybody.”
The real Enron scandal.
The Houston-based energy giant put the pursuit of profits ahead of all other corporate goals, which fostered a climate of workaholism and paranoia. And that was only part of the problem.
Six months after the merger of Exxon and Mobil, a tally of the winners and losers.
