As Texans lost power in winter storm, oil and gas pollution increased across state

Armed with a smartphone, a North Face sleeping bag and a 65-pound pit bull in her bed, Sharon Wilson was on a mission.

Wilson has worked on natural gas issues for years as a senior field advocate for the environmental group Earthworks. As the winter storm took out the power in her Dallas apartment, Wilson began to analyze incident reports from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which companies are required to file if they do not want to face fines.

Collected with help from colleague Jack McDonald, Wilson eventually analyzed 347 records filed with state regulators since Feb. 11. They detailed the growing number of oil and gas generators experiencing equipment failure and power outages, leading to accidental emissions of natural gas and their associated chemicals.

“Every time there’s bad weather, there will be additional emission events due to the weather,” Wilson said. “The oil and gas supply chain is very fragile. Some of these event reports will say a power failure happened, and so we had to blow 90,000 tons of methane and benzene into the air.”

Between Feb. 11 and Feb. 23, emissions of volatile organic compounds in the Permian Basin skyrocketed to 35 times the levels observed in the weeks before the winter storm, according to a similar analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund. The chemicals, known as VOCs, are key components in forming ozone, or smog, which can cause breathing problems for residents exposed to it, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another report by the EDF, Air Alliance Houston and Environment Texas found that these issues were not limited to West Texas. In the same two-week period, Texas oil refineries, petrochemical plants and industrial facilities released 3.5 million pounds of extra pollution, with nearly 20% of those emissions reported in the Houston area.

“We lost power, we lost water, and we gained pollution last week,” said Colin Leyden, who oversees oil and gas legislative affairs in Texas for the Environmental Defense Fund. “The first priority is the fact that we still have a million people without water and a lot of suffering. ... But we shouldn’t forget that there’s an environmental cost with not planning and being prepared for these kinds of extreme events.”

Releases of benzene, a highly flammable chemical frequently used in oil and gas production, soared by about 600% when compared to previous levels, EDF researchers said. Long-term exposure to benzene has been proven to cause cancer in humans, while the effects of short-term exposure include headaches, unconsciousness and vomiting, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“For people who live near petrochemical plants, there’s constant density monitors out at those plants to make sure that the surrounding neighborhoods aren’t being exposed to benzene or to try and alert when there’s an exposure to the surrounding communities,” Leyden said. “If we’re talking about the Permian Basin, it’s a more sparsely populated area, but you’ve got exposure for workers.”

What’s behind the increase in pollution released into the air? Wilson points to companies that reported both power failures at their power plants and frozen parts that were meant to keep natural gas from being released into the air.

Most power generators do not have much above-ground storage for natural gas, she said, leading to major issues when compressor stations fail to take gas to a pipeline and prevent it from entering the air.

“The compressors were down because there was no power,” Wilson said. “The problem was not just weatherizing power plants. It’s that the whole chain failed. Companies say over and over that they had to vent [gas] because they couldn’t get the gas downstream because the compressor station was down.”

These reports rarely result in fines because energy generators tell the TCEQ that the pollution was an unplanned event they had no control over, Leyden said. Numbers in the incident reports are considered preliminary, and will be finalized in the next two weeks.

“It seems pretty clear that we as a state need to take climate change seriously in the fact that extreme weather events are becoming more and more common, including these polar vortex events,” Leyden said. “So far, state leadership has been unwilling to do that.”

Several oil refineries and natural gas generators have declined to comment on the emissions, although many committed earlier this year to eliminating routine flaring, or burning of excess gas to save money, by 2030. Toby Baker, the TCEQ’s executive director, told Bloomberg Green that the agency is looking to improve its response to emergencies.

“We’ll examine what worked, what didn’t work so well, and what we can do to make things better next time — or, better yet, prevent it from happening again,” Baker said.

As the Texas Legislature evaluates what went wrong with the state’s electrical grid, Wilson is not optimistic that action will be taken to prevent similar pollution events from happening again. Shortly before the storm, Texas House Democrats formed a climate and environment caucus, but told The Texas Tribune they do not plan to formally endorse any legislation during the 2021 session.

Wilson plans to continue her work on natural gas issues, thinking of families she heard from during the winter storm who were seriously affected by emissions.

“Your power’s out, you don’t have any lights, and you’re getting gassed and having health impacts,” Wilson said. “The snow turned brown from pollution. The people living out on the front line are constantly impacted so that we can have power, and it doesn’t have to be that way.”