Texas bills would set state against federal oil and gas regulation, renewables

A Texas bill would bar state officials from helping enforce any federal oil and gas law that contradicts the state’s own laws.

If signed into law, the bipartisan bill would potentially hamstring attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate pollution by the oil and gas industry, putting the state — by far the nation’s largest source of planet-warming emissions from fossil fuels — on a collision course with both the Biden administration and future attempts to slow climate change.

The bill would prohibit state agencies and officials from “providing assistance to any federal agency or official regarding the enforcement of the federal statute, order, rule or regulation, regulating oil and gas operations — if the regulation is not already existing in state law,” state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R) told the Texas House Energy Resources committee on Monday.

The bill is part of a larger series of proposed legislation aimed at growing the Texas oil and gas industry while weakening the federal government’s ability to regulate it — despite attempts to do so currently remaining hypothetical.

Other legislation proposed this session would outlaw prospective bans on gas hookups or petroleum-powered lawn equipment, create new fees for electric and hybrid vehicles and tax all new electric generators that aren’t powered by natural gas.

Another cluster of bills in the state Senate — a body dominated by hardline conservatives after years of purges led by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R) — would build a fleet of new gas plants while raising taxes on Texas’ wind and solar industry, which is the largest in the nation.

Yet another Senate bill would require all wind and solar projects in Texas to go through stringent environmental and permitting regulations — including notifying all property owners within 25 miles — that the oil and gas industry remains exempt from. (That bill would require all existing renewable generation to go through the same process retroactively.)

HB33, proposed by Landgraf — chair of the state House Environmental Regulation Committee — is at least as far reaching as that Senate bill, and rides the same wave of GOP backlash to federal environmental regulation.

“The Biden Administration has Texas energy in its crosshairs, and we need to make sure that we aren’t supplying them with ammunition,” Landgraf said in a statement last year.

Landgraf did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but he told the Energy Resources committee on Monday that the bill “mirrors” a 2021 executive order signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

That order lambasted the Biden administration for what Abbott called “extreme hostility toward the energy industry,” pointing to the president’s reentry to the “job-killing” Paris climate accords, revocation of the Keystone XL pipeline and intention to regulate the potent greenhouse gas methane.

It directed state agencies to use all powers to contest any federal action that “threatens the continued strength, vitality and independence of the energy industry.” (While Abbott’s order did not explicitly identify the “energy industry” with oil and gas, none of his complaints addressed threats to wind, solar or nuclear energy.)

Republicans have complained for much of the Biden administration about a “war” on fossil fuels.

If such a conflict exists, Landgraf hails from its front lines. He represents Odessa, Texas — childhood home of former President George W. Bush, and economic hub of the Permian Basin, a network of subterranean oil and gas deposits whose once dwindling production surged with the advent of fracking to supply 40 percent of U.S. oil and gas production.

That production has come at a steep climate and environmental cost. “Natural gas” is almost entirely composed of methane, a climate-warming chemical that is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Methane gas often leaks from pipelines and storage tanks. And with production often greater than pipeline infrastructure can transport, gas producers often burn it off — a process called “flaring” — or simply let the raw gas escape into the atmosphere.

Rising production has also led to surging levels of ozone — an air pollutant that can inflame airways, cause or worsen asthma, and raise the risk of “an early death from heart or lung disease,” according to the EPA.

Last year, the Biden administration EPA considered a new rule which would have required state regulators in certain heavily polluted Basin counties to prepare ozone reduction plans, The Texas Tribune reported.

That state-level ozone-reduction planning never went into effect. After heavy pushback from the oil and gas industry, the Biden administration quietly shelved the potential rule in January, the Tribune reported.

And if Landgraf’s bill passes, such collaboration between state and local officials would become illegal under state law — unless the Texas legislature has consented to such legislation.