Texas’ fight against fracking

February 23, 2012

Clinton McBride reports on local organizing to take on natural gas drilling in Texas.

FROM FIFTH grade onward, Texas children are taught about "black gold." We're told that Texas is oil and oil is king. Our textbooks show us the spurting gusher at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901. "That," our elementary school teachers tell us, "is the start of the oil boom." Ever since then, Texas and Texans have been connected with oil and natural gas.

Houston soon became the crown jewel in the oil empire--Theodore Roosevelt initiated a $1 million project in 1902 to build the Houston Ship Channel--and is still heralded the "Oil capital of the world." In 1930, oil was discovered 100 miles east of Dallas, and that city saw its own oil boom, sheltering it from the Great Depression and spawning economic growth that made Dallas the second largest city in Texas and the nation's secondary oil capital.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was developed and perfected in our own backyards, literally. Since the early 2000s, gas companies have been trying to sell the "natural gas boom" to Texans as they bid on our mineral rights and gamble on the future of our communities.

An anti-fracking protest in North Texas
An anti-fracking protest in North Texas

Despite tens of thousands of wells approved already in North Texas, gas companies want more. Indeed, they need more if they want to stay profitable--the average life of a well makes it economically unsustainable beyond about seven years.


AS THOUSANDS of new wells sprout up across North Texas, thousands of North Texans have joined the fight against fracking. In 2006, the town of Flower Mound, north of Fort Worth, voted out the mayor and entire city council--the new city council was compelled to enact regulations so strong that no new gas wells have been drilled there since.

The fight there inspired more people to fight back throughout the North Texas region. In 2009, the nearby town of Denton saw a grassroots community organization stand against new gas well drilling near a local hospital and elementary school.

Since then, more and more people have joined the fight. In December 2011, almost 20 activists stood to interrupt a City Planning and Zoning Committee meeting, mic-checking a vote to approve more new gas wells within 800 feet of the University of North Texas.

At the time, Denton city officials said a moratorium on gas wells would never be considered. But months of campaigning for stronger regulations and a moratorium on fracking resulted in a partial victory on February 7. The Denton city council voted unanimously in favor of a 120-day moratorium as a city task force considered new gas regulations. Even so, the city's task force is heavily tilted in favor of the gas industry and is unlikely to approve regulations as strict as city residents would like to see.

Even if Denton is meant to protect its community with strong regulations, the state of Texas has ensured that no one is safe in the land of the big gas mafia. The North Texas community of DISH discovered that truth in 2007 when it challenged the Texas Railroad Commission (the agency responsible for regulating mineral rights in Texas) and found that gas companies' right to drill supercedes a community's or an individual's right to resist.

Similar fights are happening throughout North Texas, but citizens in DISH, Denton, Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington are all hitting the same roadblock: local regulations can only go so far.

Cities are legally prevented from banning fracking by the state of Texas. Mineral rights laws say that citizens of Texas have an inalienable right to exploit the mineral resources beneath their land, and no authority can challenge that right.

Communities also cannot block gas company's pipelines, since under arcane laws promoting the construction of railroads in the late 1800s, the Texas Railroad Commission considers gas pipelines to be "common carriers," which are guaranteed eminent domain over even city governments.

But with anti-fracking sentiment coming to a head in North Texas, the state has passed a new loophole so companies can get to the gas. Companies can now apply to the Texas Railroad Commission for "mineral rights pooling" approval, allowing a single company to bid on entire communities and purchase rights to their minerals collectively, eliminating the possibility for individual landowners to block access to their minerals.

Denton, Texas, is ground zero for the fight against fracking in the state of Texas, where even children are indoctrinated with the idea that oil reigns supreme. Victory in this town could lay the groundwork for others to fight and win in their own communities, but activists are up against the energy-congressional complex in Austin.

Gas companies know that Texas is their private sandbox. They're also aware of the rising consciousness in the region. That's why they've adopted military terminology to describe activists as "fracking insurgents." In Texas, oil may well be king, but no kingdom lasts forever against a people awakened. The fight against fracking is far from over--in fact it's only just begun.

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