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Guess who pays Apache Corp to frack Balmorhea

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Who pays Apache to frack Balmorhea

You do. You Pay to Frack Balmorhea.

Your tax dollars pay to maintain and protect the Balmorhea State Park, the endangered species that live there and the San Solomon spring.

Your tax dollars pay Apache to frack Balmorhea and ruin the Balmorhea State Park, the endangered species that live there and the San Solomon Spring.

The Irony Burns

Stockholm Environment Institute and EarthTrack released A REPORT Wednesday using work done by Oil Change International to calculate the value of oil production subsidies in the US.

The report concludes: The oil industry only survives because of government handouts.

40% of Permian Basin oil production is dependent on federal and state subsidies.

Click here for the full infographic

That is just for oil. Texas has an additional government handout for shale gas.

There is no doubt that drilling 3500 wells in the area will ruin any value Balmorhea State Park has as a tourist destination. No one will go there to vacation and swim in the spring. People do not travel to heavy industrial zones to vacation. Additionally, the threat to the spring itself is huge.

Without a handout from the government, Apache could not frack Balmorhea.

If you don’t want to see your tax dollars spent this way, go to Who Represents Me and enter your address. Pick up the phone and call your state and U.S. senators and representatives or write them an email or letter. Send them a copy of the report. They are the ones who vote to give handouts to corporations like Apache. Here are some recommendations you can give you elected officials:

RECOMMENDATIONS
Across the country, public money is propping up oil production and private
profits — even while the majority of Americans want stronger action on climate
and many families are struggling to make ends meet. We can pull the plug on
artificially economic oil production by ending fossil fuel handouts.
In order to show leadership in a clean energy economy that helps avert climate
chaos, the United States must:

  • Sunset oil and gas subsidies, some of which have been on the
    books for over 100 years, at least as quickly as wind, solar, and
    other renewable energy subsidies face phase-outs. End wasteful
    public spending that rigs the market in favor of oil, gas, and coal
    companies by phasing out all fossil fuel subsidies.
  • Implement reporting guidelines on fossil fuel subsidies, including
    tax expenditures, to ensure full disclosure of state and federal
    government subsidies and their beneficiaries.
  • Use federal and state support to promote investment in jobintensive,
    climate-friendly infrastructure such as renewable
    energy, low-carbon transportation, energy efficient buildings, and a
    just transition for energy workers and communities. LINK

Today in his Secretary of State confirmation hearing, Rex Tillerson said that Exxon does not receive any government handouts. That’s not true, of course.

the Oil & Gas Industry receives more than $17 Billion in Subsidies per year, and according to our new analysis ExxonMobil likely gets as much as $1 billion of that.  LINK

Call your elected officials today and tell them to stop the government handouts to the oil and gas industry.

 

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.

Comments

  1. Tim Ruggiero says

    These hearings can be a joke sometimes. It’s bad enough no one is going to fact check what Tillerson says or claims during his testimony, or if they do, it’ll never make a damn bit of difference to those on the committee. What’s even more troubling is that Tillerson deliberately and intentionally circumvented US Policy (Iran Embargo) by having a foreign corporation act on Exxon’s behalf. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

    • TXsharon says

      With no commentary from you, Jon, it’s hard to know where you are coming from in posting that opinion piece. So to be clear: the author is not in support of continuing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry but rather the need to understand and reform the subsidies. There is no doubt that the author does not support continuing to base our economy and way of life on a dirty, finite fuel source that is killing us as he states in his opinion on resilience.org.

      Don’t misunderstand what he is saying. I know Nate, and we have had numerous discussions on this topic. He isn’t saying that fossil fuels are a wonderful gift to be celebrated. Like me, he has lectured and written plenty on the dangers of building a society on the basis of depleting resources. He is saying, rather, that the subsidy that fossil fuel gave to society was allowing us to overextend and overpopulate. This subsidy has enabled huge numbers of people to enjoy a standard of living that was out of the reach of even royalty 100 years ago. And we very much take all of these things for granted, and we don’t recognize how badly this story could end once these finite fossil fuel reserves — in particular oil because it will be the hardest to replace — head down the back side of the depletion curve.

      And he refines his position on fossil fuel use and subsidies later in the same opinion:

      Sometimes people get a distorted view of my position on fossil fuels. They believe that because I am very aware of their role in our modern lives, that I believe we should continue to grow their consumption. That’s not it. I am aware that we will continue to need them for years to come, because society would collapse if they are rapidly removed (either by policy changes or by geology). Thus, I am aware of their current importance to modern society. So my position is that we don’t have the luxury of opposing all fossil fuel projects unless we want to see lots of people starve to death, or at a minimum face energy prices that are unaffordable. I would argue that the impacts of having our fossil fuel supplies drastically cut would be far swifter and far more severe than the climate change impacts if we manage a slower transition.

      At the same time, we need to do everything in our power to manage demand, but more importantly to bring new energy supplies online that are more sustainable than what we have. This won’t happen overnight, but needs to be done with a sense of urgency. Even then it’s unlikely that we can replace the energy content of 90 million barrels of oil, but the closer we come to meeting this, the better off we will all be in the long run.

      Ultimately that’s a position that sooner or later alienates people on both sides of the political spectrum. On that note, I will close with one more thing Nate said to me: “Truth is a path with fewer friends.”

      We have choices and it is possible to quickly move away from a fossil fuel based economy. What we lack is the political will because the fossil fuel industry drowns our elected officials in BILLIONS of dollars in legal bribes.

      Apache does not need to frack Balmorhea to help Americans move forward. That gas is slated for export to Mexico and then on to Asia. There are some places that are just too special and too sacred to allow fracking. Why ruin one of those places for short term gain that will ONLY benefit Apache and their shareholders? There will be no benefit to the people in Balmorhea. Already in Craigslist there is an ad to sell 2 lots right in the city for a man camp. The tiny town will be overrun with the typical and well documented boom bust crime and destruction and a once global tourist destination will be left with nothing but pollution and dirty, rotting oil and gas infrastructure.

      Subsidies need to be reformed and the fossil fuel industry needs to pay for environmental damage so that we can move quickly away from fossil fuel use and convert to clean, renewable energy. Only clean, renewable energy will move America forward with a stronger economy and more jobs. Thank you fossil fuels, but now it’s time for you to die.

  3. Frackmaster II says

    Every time I have dug down on oil industry subsidy claims, I have found that the “subsidies” are failure to tax. We all get subsidies including the oil industry. The federal government subsidizes my house by not taxing income spent on interest. They also subsidize my health care and have for 50 years. When I see the billions in subsidies listed and details are reveled, the sum includes things like severance tax breaks, depletion allowances, expensing some well costs. I can assure you that the cash flow for the industry is to the government, not away. I am sure that everyone knows that the oil and gas industry is one of the few industries that is taxed on its feedstock.

    Like any industry, the oil and gas business has lobbyists and these lobbyists negotiate a few stupid tax breaks, but capitalizing and depreciating a useless hole in the ground sounds a bit inappropriate as well.

    A lot of this issue is moot; the EPA is going to be defanged, industry will be deregulated, and, as soon as the executive branch intimidates enough judges, environmentalists will have no recourse. We can all happily drown in our own filth and our greatest climate change threat will be nuclear winter.