Texas Oil & Gas Accountability Project Launches,
Releases Oil & Gas Development Best Practices Platform
EARTHWORKS formally launched its Texas Oil & Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) via telephone conference on today at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. At the launch, Texas OGAP will release its campaign platform, DRILL-RIGHT TEXAS: Best Oil & Gas Development Practices for Texas. We will also introduce the lead Texas OGAP Organizer, Sharon Wilson, along with other key experts on the impacts of oil and gas development on health, communities and the environment. The new EARTHWORKS campaign will work throughout Texas to prevent and minimize the impacts caused by energy development.
EARTHWORKS’ nationally-recognized Oil & Gas Accountability Project was created in 1999 to work with communities to prevent and reduce the impacts caused by energy development. In its first decade, OGAP boldly challenged the notion that natural gas is clean energy by exposing the industry practice of hydraulic fracturing, the widespread use of toxic drilling chemicals and the oil and gas industry’s sweeping exemptions from U.S. environmental laws. OGAP has built a national network of diverse organizations addressing drilling issues and has pushed for the passage of precedent-setting laws and regulations protecting landowner rights, special places and public health from Alaska to New Mexico and beyond. OGAP’s 2005 publication, Oil and Gas at Your Door? A Landowner’s Guide to Oil and Gas Development, is considered the preeminent resource for landowners and communities facing drilling in their backyards.
EARTHWORKS staff and board members have worked with Texans since the Barnett Shale drilling boom sparked citizens to demand greater oversight of oil and gas activities in the region. For the past year, we’ve been coordinating with a volunteer steering committee of rural and urban residents to form Texas OGAP and develop DRILL-RIGHT TEXAS.
Working with concerned Texas citizens, Wilma Subra, a chemist and MacArthur Genius Award recipient, who is also a board member of EARTHWORKS, recently conducted a health survey in DISH, Texas, and presented the results to the DISH Town Board and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ): http://www.earthworksaction.org/publications.cfm?pubID=439. This work has already resulted in a new TCEQ same-day response policy to odor complaints from oil and gas facilities. Citizen pressure has also successfully persuaded the agency to begun air quality monitoring in the Fort Worth region, where over 1,100 wells have been drilled within city limits.
Texas OGAP will work with communities statewide to prevent and minimize the impacts caused by energy development. EARTHWORKS has 27,000 members nationwide, and maintains offices in California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Watch for more information.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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The TCEQ may be responding in 12 hours but they are finding "nothing". I still have the air canister given to collect air sample at Rayzor Ranch during flaring and no one will come to pick it up. When I looked to see the conclusion of the investigation it had been closed! I STILL HAVE THE AIR SAMPLE I OBTAINED DURING THE INVESTIGATION. I appreciate all OGAP has helped us obtain but someone forgot to tell TCEQ 12 hour response but no investigation is the same as no investigation.
I will support OGAP with my donations of money and time but I think the above information shows we still have a long way to go here in Texas.
Great blog!!! I wish you the best in your area. We are fighting this in our area.
Trust me that in Texas, there is NO help to the ordinary peasants, whatsoever! If you think otherwise, you are dreaming! But, keep up the hope. Also, donate away; but, don't expect anything from the donee! The donor is only seperated from their money!
We DO have a very long way to go! Texas didn't get this way over night and it won't get fixed over night. Your support is appreciated.
You should call the hot line and complain AGAIN and ask them how they can close an investigation that hasn't happened. Sheesh! But this is good data.
You will have to go online and make a records request at the TCEQ to get the results of any air testing. It's a pain, I know, and we need to work on that for sure but we need all the data we can get, even the epic fail.
HOPE AND DREAMING ARE CHEAP SO I WILL KEEP UP BOTH.
I DO NOT FEEL LIKE MY DONATIONS ARE WASTED. THE DONATIONS MAKE ME FEEL LIKE PART OF THE SOLUTION AND NOT PART OF THE PROBLEM.
PROGRESS IS BEING MADE IT IS JUST NOT AS OBVIOUS AS A BIG DRILLING RIG IN YOUR BACKYARD.
I LIKE BEING AN ORDINARY PEASANT IT KEEPS ME UNDER THE RADAR AND I FEEL MUCH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED FROM DOWN HERE.
ANON IT MUST BE DEPRESSING BEING SO CYNICAL.
This is great news! Congratulations, Sharon.
Johnny Micou
Drilling Santa Fe &
Common Ground United
Thanks, Johnny! I just hope we can do half as well as y'all have.