When a spate of wildfires tore throughout the Texas Panhandle in February and scorched 20,000 acres of Craig Cowden’s ranch close to Skellytown, he determined he had had sufficient. Cowden took on a second unofficial job: on the lookout for attainable hearth hazards on his household land, together with checking on the electrical strains that energy oil and fuel tools.
In contrast to the utility firms that run energy strains throughout a area beneath state oversight, oil and fuel firms sometimes string their very own energy strains from utility poles to their work websites.
Texas depends on the operators to keep up these strains. Not all of them do. And the state businesses that regulate the power trade and the facility trade mentioned they’re powerless to control energy strains within the oil patch.
Cowden, 38, spots issues akin to a pump jack with defective wiring or an influence line mendacity on useless grass. He’s filed complaints with the Railroad Fee of Texas, which oversees oil and fuel operations. The company inspected a few of the points he reported, Cowden mentioned. That made him fortunate — a lawyer mentioned others have needed to file lawsuits in opposition to oil lease homeowners to get harmful electrical tools fastened.
“I’ve sufficient to do on my plate,” Cowden mentioned. “I don’t have to do their job too, however that’s principally what I’m having to do as a way to get change.”
The sequence of devastating February fires burned greater than 1.2 million acres. Electrical strains for oilfield tools had been blamed for at the least two of them, state information present. The catastrophe revealed the hazard of what are successfully unregulated energy strains constructed by oil and fuel operators — an issue Texas lawmakers tried and failed to repair 15 years in the past.
State Rep. Ken King, a Republican from the Panhandle who led the investigation into the latest fires, mentioned he would favor to not push a brand new regulation subsequent yr to deal with that regulatory hole. As an alternative, he needs the Railroad Fee to put in writing a rule defining its function in investigating power operators for electrical issues and notifying the state Public Utility Fee if the electrical energy must be turned off.
However in a press release to The Texas Tribune, the Railroad Fee mentioned it doesn’t have any formal function in regulating energy strains. And the Public Utility Fee of Texas, which oversees electrical energy within the state, informed the Tribune it lacked authorized authority to examine oilfield energy strains too.
King and different legislators mentioned the result’s “a regulatory ‘no man’s land’” that leaves the Panhandle residents weak to extra wildfires — as they’ve been for years.
“I’d by no means do something to break the oil and fuel trade in our state; it’s too vital,” King mentioned. “However that being mentioned, one tiny a part of the trade doesn’t have the precise to burn thousands and thousands of acres and destroy all these different industries each couple years as a result of they received’t clear up their very own mess.”
In 2006, eight fires merged to turn out to be the East Amarillo Complicated Fireplace and blazed for 9 days, setting a report for the largest hearth within the state’s historical past that stood till this yr’s fires. Lawyer Joe Lovell mentioned improperly constructed energy strains owned by an oil and fuel operator precipitated the North Fireplace, which grew to become a part of that 2006 advanced that burned a part of Cowden’s property. Lovell sued the operator on behalf of landowners and households of two individuals who died.
Three years later, Texas legislators handed a regulation that required oilfield operators to construct and preserve their energy strains in response to the Nationwide Electrical Code. However the regulation didn’t specify a penalty or an company to implement it, so there have been no penalties for violating it.
Energy strains have precipitated 14,236 fires that burned roughly 2.7 million acres since 2005, mentioned Jake Donellan, the Texas A&M Forest Service’s discipline operations division head. The company traditionally didn’t monitor what number of of these had been brought on by oilfield electrical strains specifically. It’s now engaged on including a subcategory to report that data.
Oil operators are accountable for their very own strains
Within the Texas Panhandle, the place oilfields are unfold throughout personal ranches, oilfield operators typically depend on a single energy utility that serves the area. Every operator that wants electrical energy at a worksite is accountable for tying into the closest energy pole.
The method of requesting a connection and hiring electricians to do the work can take six to 9 months and value a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars}, mentioned Jason Herrick, president of Pantera Vitality Firm.
“It’s as much as the operator to get it to the placement,” Herrick mentioned.
Pantera owns 1,800 wells within the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and southwest Kansas. The corporate checks the situation of its electrical strains and poles twice a yr, together with inspecting the Johnny Balls that weigh the strains down and prevents them from clashing collectively and sparking, Herrick mentioned. The operator additionally inspects its oilfield tools each day.
Not all oil and fuel operators maintain their wires, mentioned King, who chaired the investigative committee created to analyze the February fires. Some wells produce small quantities of oil and operators watching prices may not spend cash to keep up them, he mentioned.
King’s committee, which incorporates two different Home members and two members of the general public, discovered the regulatory oversight of oil and fuel operators “grossly poor” particularly for firms overseeing these low-producing or non-producing wells.
In February, legal professionals say a rotten utility pole owned by the utility Xcel Vitality, which serves greater than 3.7 million prospects in Texas and 7 different states, snapped and crashed onto dry grass. That ignited the fast-spreading Smokehouse Creek Fireplace that burned for almost three weeks, killed hundreds of head of cattle and set a brand new report for the most important wildfire in Texas after torching greater than 1 million acres. Xcel Vitality acknowledged its tools was concerned in beginning the blaze.
Moreover, proof confirmed that personal energy line tools on oilfields began at the least one of many different fires at the moment and is suspected of inflicting one other, in response to Texas A&M Forest Service investigator studies.
An investigator on the Grape Vine Creek Fireplace discovered {that a} steel conduit wasn’t connected with brackets to {the electrical} pole, so it blew round within the wind, inflicting sparks. Two sources informed the investigator that an oil and fuel operator owned the pole however the investigator couldn’t decide who owned the pole or {the electrical} tools, in response to the investigators’ report.
On the spot the place the Windy Deuce Fireplace began, three energy strains round a pump jack had been strung via the branches of a small tree, the state investigator discovered. The hearth went on to burn greater than 140,000 acres, incinerating properties across the metropolis of Fritch and placing residents on edge within the metropolis of Borger — the place a prescribed burn months earlier created a firebreak that saved numerous properties.
“Windy Deuce is the traditional instance of what occurs when no one enforces the regulation,” mentioned John Lovell, an Amarillo legal professional.
Lovell is representing a rancher who filed a declare to get cash from the oilfield firm that they consider owned the facility strains, Polaris Working. He mentioned the facility strains received shut sufficient to one another for electrical energy to leap between them, melting aluminum within the wire and inflicting the hearth.
Attorneys for Polaris, which was in chapter proceedings when the hearth occurred, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Residents have nowhere to show for assist
At Breezy Level Ranch, Cowden’s cows graze across the dozens of pump jacks. Outdated leases from the Nineteen Twenties had been handed down from one oilfield operator to the subsequent — leaving Cowden’s palms tied. Whereas the land on his ranch is his, the minerals beneath it aren’t.
So, he has to take care of the tools. He’s misplaced at the least one cow to electrocution from {an electrical} line that shorted out. One operator for lots of the wells informed Cowden to sue the corporate if he didn’t like how the tools was managed, he mentioned.
Others have filed lawsuits to get fixes. In Archer County, a household sued the oil and fuel lease proprietor on their property in 2017 to get electrical tools fastened. The operator fastened the tools two weeks earlier than the case went to trial, mentioned John Lovell, the legal professional additionally concerned within the Windy Deuce case.
“We needed to spend I don’t know what number of tens and tens and tens of hundreds of {dollars} to get them to adjust to the regulation,” Lovell mentioned.
Cowden mentioned that operator for lots of the oil websites on his ranch has not been simple to work with, and it’s gotten worse since he introduced pictures of the circumstances to lawmakers on the hearings that adopted the February fires.
The corporate was supplying electrical energy to certainly one of Cowden’s water wells however Cowden mentioned they minimize it as a result of they mentioned it wanted to be inspected. He mentioned he’s not in opposition to the oil and fuel trade, however needs there to be accountability and prudent operations.
“Eliminating the ignition is an issue we should always tackle,” Cowden mentioned. “I don’t assume there’s been an enough response to that.”
This text initially appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/01/texas-oil-electricity-power-lines-fires-panhandle/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and interesting Texans on state politics and coverage. Be taught extra at texastribune.org.
Subjects
Catastrophe
Natural Disasters
Texas
Wildfire
Energy
Oil Gas
