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Hakim Dermish moved to the small South Texas town of Catarina in 2002 in search of a rural lifestyle on a budget. The property where he lived with his wife didn’t have electricity or sewer lines at first, but that didn’t bother him.
“Even if we lived in a cardboard box, no one could kick us out,” Dermish said.
Back then, Catarina was a sleepy place. A decade later, oil and gas drilling picked up, and he welcomed the financial opportunities it brought. Dermish launched businesses to support the industry, offering everything from guards for drill sites to housing for oil field workers.
The growth also brought flares — flames burning off excess natural gas — that blazed day and night at wells in the surrounding countryside. Initially enamored of the industry’s potential, Dermish now worried that its pollution endangered the health of the town’s 75 residents. He began lodging complaints with the state in 2023, asking it to push companies to control emissions.
Inspectors with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality investigated, finding only a handful of violations, some of which the companies addressed. But that did little to allay the concerns of Dermish and his neighbors, who continued to see flares light up the sky and to smell gas wafting over the community.
“Starting first thing in the morning, talk about the stench. Then you call the state and nothing happens,” Dermish said. “They do absolutely nothing.”
His neighbor Lupe Campos, who worked in the oil fields for more than three decades, lives three blocks from a flare. Toxic hydrogen sulfide escapes from nearby wells, giving the air the smell of “burnt rotten eggs,” Campos said. “It’s hard to bear.”
While working to expand the nation’s oil and gas production, President Donald Trump’s administration has maintained that drilling in the U.S. is cleaner than in other countries due to tighter environmental oversight. To mark Earth Day, for example, the White House boasted in a statement that increased natural gas exports meant the U.S. would be “sharing cleaner energy with allies” and “reducing global emissions.”
But Texas, the heart of America’s oil and gas industry, tells a different story.
Texas regulators tout their efforts to curtail oil field emissions by requiring drillers to obtain permits to release or burn gas from their wells.
Yet a first-of-its-kind analysis of permit applications to the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s main oil and gas regulator, reveals a rubber-stamp system that allows drillers to emit vast amounts of natural gas into the atmosphere. Over 40 months — from May 2021 to September 2024 — oil companies applied for more than 12,000 flaring and venting permits, while the Railroad Commission rejected just 53 of them, a 99.6% approval rate, according to the data.
Natural gas is composed mostly of climate-warming methane but also contains other gases such as hydrogen sulfide, which is deadly at high concentrations. Gas escapes as wells are drilled and before infrastructure is in place to capture it. It also can be intentionally released if pressure in the system poses a safety risk or if capturing and transporting it to be sold is not profitable. Typically, drillers burn the gas they don’t capture, converting the methane to carbon dioxide, a less potent greenhouse gas, in a process called flaring. Sometimes, they release the gas without burning it, in a process called venting.
The permit applications showed oil companies requested to flare or vent more than 195 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, enough to power more than 3 million homes and generate millions of dollars of tax revenue had the gas been captured. Those emissions would have a climate-warming impact roughly equivalent to 27 gas-fired power plants operating year-round, even if the flares burned every molecule of methane released from the wells.
“It’s a gargantuan amount of emissions,” said Jack McDonald, senior analyst of energy policy and science for the environmental group Oilfield Witness. “Because so much of this gas is methane and so much of it is either incompletely combusted or not combusted at all through the venting process, we see a huge climate impact.”
Oilfield Witness gathered and studied the Railroad Commission data on exemptions to the state’s flaring rules and shared it with ProPublica and Inside Climate News. The news organizations verified the data, including by soliciting input from professors at universities in Texas.
Railroad Commission spokesperson R.J. DeSilva said in a statement that Texas has made “significant progress” in addressing methane emissions. Companies must provide evidence that flaring is necessary, and, when approving permits, the agency follows all applicable rules, he said. “If an application lacks sufficient justification, it is returned with comments for clarification.”
“I am proud of the progress that has been made to reduce the waste of our natural resources,” Jim Wright, chair of the Railroad Commission, said in a statement, adding that “there is always room for further improvement.”
The analysis likely overstates emissions, since the near-guarantee that regulators will approve a permit gives companies an incentive to request authorization for amounts larger than they intend to emit to ensure they’re in compliance. For example, operators in four Texas counties flared about 70% of the volume of gas that their permits allowed, according to a recent effort to compare the state’s flaring data to information collected via satellite. And the Railroad Commission sometimes approves flaring smaller volumes than requested, which is not captured in the data.
“The Texas oil and natural gas industry is committed to ongoing progress in reducing flaring and methane emissions while continuing to meet the ever-growing demand for reliable oil and natural gas across the globe,” Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, a trade group, told ProPublica and Inside Climate News in a statement.
Residents of communities surrounded by flares and leaking wells, like Catarina, want the state and the industry to do more to control oil field emissions. The Railroad Commission approved eight flares within 5 miles of the town during the study period and 280 across surrounding Dimmit County, according to agency data.
The danger posed by the gas became impossible to ignore on March 27, as a 30-inch steel pipeline a half-mile from Catarina failed. The rupture blasted more than 23 million cubic feet of gas into the air, as much as is used in 365 homes in a year, according to data the company that owns the pipeline, Energy Transfer, reported to the Railroad Commission.
On March 27, a pipeline just outside Catarina failed, spewing a large volume of natural gas into the air. As his house shook, Hakim Dermish captured the aftermath on his cellphone. Credit:Courtesy of Hakim Dermish
Dermish recorded the chaos with his cellphone. “The house is shaking,” he says in the video as the escaping gas roars, its concussions jostling the camera.
Fearing for their safety, he and his wife evacuated, heading to a neighboring town for the day. After they returned home that evening, he called the sheriff to ask what had happened. During the conversation, Dermish could feel the gas causing him to slur his words. The next morning, Dermish noticed new gas flares, presumably lit to release pressure in the pipeline network by burning excess gas. A cellphone video he recorded shows a towering column of flame, taller than a nearby telephone pole, billowing and rippling.
“Have you ever seen ‘Lord of the Rings’? Do you remember the Fire of Mordor?” Dermish said in an interview. “That’s what we have here.”
An incident report submitted to the state by Energy Transfer attributed the pipeline failure to a technician’s errors. Without objection from the Railroad Commission, the pipeline was repaired and back in service three days later. The agency did not assess Energy Transfer with a violation or a fine.
Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment.
After more than two decades in Catarina, Dermish and his wife are planning to move away. “It’s just too dangerous,” he said.
While the Trump administration characterizes American oil and gas as cleaner than fossil fuels from other countries, it has rolled back rules regulating methane.
The Environmental Protection Agency has, under Trump, delayed implementing previously finalized rules that would’ve mandated that the industry monitor for methane leaks and address them. He and Republicans in Congress also repealed the country’s first-ever tax on methane. And in June, Trump revoked a Biden administration guidance document laying out how companies should comply with a law aimed at reducing methane leaks from pipelines.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
As the nation’s highest-producing oil and gas state, Texas is a key barometer of the U.S. regulatory environment and whether it has created a cleaner fossil fuel industry.
The Permian Basin — the country’s largest oil field, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico border — was estimated by a 2024 study to emit the second-most methane of any oil field in the world.
The industry disputes that finding, pointing to a June report from S&P Global Commodity Insights that found that the rate of methane emissions in the Permian Basin dropped 29% between 2023 and 2024. “Methane emissions management” is increasingly a part of the industry’s operations, Raoul LeBlanc, a vice president at S&P, said in a statement announcing the findings. However, S&P’s report acknowledged that satellite data showed a much more modest reduction of 4%, contradicting the company’s own data, which was collected by airplane.
“We can say confidently that there is no evidence that methane emissions from the Permian Basin are low,” said Steven Hamburg, who studies methane as the Environmental Defense Fund’s chief scientist.
In Texas, State Rule 32 prohibits flaring and venting gas at wells, except under a few specific conditions: while the well is being drilled, during the first 10 days after the well is completed and when necessary to ensure safety. Otherwise, drillers must seek an exception.
The Railroad Commission changed the application process for these exemptions in 2020 and issued new guidance in 2021. Operators would have to explain why they could not suspend drilling to avoid flaring and indicate that they had investigated all options for using the gas before flaring.
Oilfield Witness gathered all exemption requests since 2021, which showed the agency repeatedly approving permits that failed to comply with its guidelines. In many cases, oil companies asked to flare indefinitely or didn’t justify why they needed to flare, leaving blank the section of the application asking why the exemption was needed.
Capturing the gas requires an expensive system of pipelines, compressors and other infrastructure that can cost more than the gas is worth. In their permit applications, companies cite this reality, often listing financial considerations as the reason for seeking exemptions, Oilfield Witness found. These were nearly always approved, even though the agency wrote that finances were an insufficient explanation in a presentation on the permitting process.
“The Railroad Commission seems very interested in devolving decision-making processes to the companies themselves,” McDonald said.
The data also showed that nearly 90% of the approved permit applications were backdated, retroactively giving permission for flares that were already burning. Oil companies typically asked the Railroad Commission for permission to flare 10 days after they had already burned the gas.
A spokesperson said that when the commission revamped its guidelines in 2020, it allowed a longer period in which companies could file for a permit after they’d already started to flare. Even so, nearly 900 of the permits were applied for after the updated filing window and still accepted by the agency.
The Railroad Commission also approved more than 7,000 flares within areas where the gas reservoir being drilled was known to be high in hydrogen sulfide, increasing the likelihood that the toxic gas could escape into the air. Of those flares, 600 were within a mile of a residence, the agency’s data showed.
Minimizing flaring permits is “not a priority in any sense” for the Railroad Commission, said Gunnar Schade, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “The priority is oil produced, and that means revenue for the state. Oil and gas is a priority, so who cares about the flaring?”
The Railroad Commission and the state’s oil industry trumpet their work to reduce flaring. The agency points to state data showing flaring rates dropping dramatically, specifically since 2019. And the Texas Oil and Gas Association announced in early August that drillers in the Permian Basin “slashed methane emission intensity by more than half in just two years.”
But such claims are misleading, according to experts such as David DiCarlo, an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s petroleum engineering school. Using 2019 as a starting point leaves a false impression that there’s been a sharp decline, he said, as methane emissions that year were staggeringly high due to booming production and inadequate pipeline capacity to gather the gas.
DeSilva, the Railroad Commission’s spokesperson, defended using 2019 as the baseline because “about five years ago we began taking proactive steps to reduce flaring in Texas.”
Taking a longer view shows that a median of 2.2% of gas at Texas oil wells was flared or vented over the past decade, according to a ProPublica and Inside Climate News review of state data. (Flaring at gas wells is rare because those sites have the necessary pipeline infrastructure in place to collect the gas.) That figure hovered just north of 2% in the most recently available data, representing a much smaller drop than the state and industry claim. The industry still hasn’t built sufficient pipeline networks to capture gas at oil wells, so, as production rises, so does flaring and venting.
Not Much Recent Progress on Oil Well Flaring
The Texas oil industry and its regulators have celebrated a reduction in the burning of climate-warming gases at oil wells, a practice known as flaring. However, state data shows that, while the flaring rate is below its 2019 peak, it has stayed relatively constant for the past several years.
“They can’t get it below 2% because they keep drilling,” DiCarlo said. Since emissions are highest when a well is being drilled, overall emissions will remain high as long as the industry is drilling new wells. “That’s just the nature of the beast.”
Among the largest beneficiaries of the state’s lax permitting system was an oil company called Endeavor Energy Resources. More than half the approved permanent flaring exemptions went to Endeavor, which merged with the $40 billion Diamondback Energy in September 2024. Endeavor also applied for the longest flaring permit — 6,300 days, or more than 17 years. The Railroad Commission approved the permit without shortening its duration.
Diamondback Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
The industry has simultaneously claimed that it is addressing methane while bristling at oversight.
Natural gas, as seen through a specialized camera that captures infrared energy, streams out of a Diamondback Energy facility near Midland, Texas, in 2023. Credit:Courtesy of Oilfield Witness
Steven Pruett is the president and CEO of Elevation Resources, a Permian Basin oil company, and the immediate past chair of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, one of the industry’s main trade groups. His company saw a 2,408% increase in flaring immediately following new wells being drilled and a 692% increase in flaring overall in 2023, according to emails unearthed by environmental watchdog organization Fieldnotes and shared with ProPublica and Inside Climate News. In the email exchange with University of Texas faculty who were preparing a grant application for a federal methane-reduction program, Pruett blamed the increases on inadequate infrastructure to capture the gas.
Just weeks later, Pruett participated in a tour of the oil field alongside EPA staff, where he echoed the claim that the American oil and gas industry is cleaner than others and that drilling companies were complying with efforts to reduce emissions.
During his term at the helm of the national trade group, it spearheaded multiple lawsuits against the EPA over the government’s methane rules.
Pruett did not respond to a request for comment.
Those opposed to flaring face long odds in halting the practice, even in rare instances when the Railroad Commission hears objections.
Consider the experience of Tom Pohlman, then sheriff of Fisher County, who had a flare burning next to his home in the Texas Panhandle starting in October 2023. The driller responsible for it, Patton Exploration, solicited companies to extend a pipeline to the oil well to capture the gas and evaluated whether the gas could be used to mine bitcoin. But by July 2024, it still had no deal, so the company sought another permit to continue flaring up to 1 million cubic feet of gas per day for 18 months. “Patton is diligently pursuing every avenue possible to find a solution, but still needs more time,” the company wrote in its application.
When Pohlman learned that Patton Exploration had applied for a new permit, he and his neighbors urged the Railroad Commission to deny it.
“The sound that comes from the flame is a constant roar that we can hear throughout our property both day and night,” the neighbors wrote in their objection. “There is no peace and quiet since the day of its ignition.”
In September 2024, Pohlman became one of the few people to officially challenge a flaring permit in Texas, as he and Patton Exploration representatives went head-to-head in a hearing before a Railroad Commission administrative law judge.
“For approximately 20 of my residents in this area, it completely lights up their yard and everything else,” Pohlman said, telling the judge that the flare was 45 feet high. “I just need liveability for this neighborhood. We’ve had nothing but issues here.”
Patton Exploration’s lawyer, David Gross, acknowledged the neighbors’ frustrations but emphasized the importance of keeping the well pumping.
“You can’t produce the oil without producing the gas,” he told the judge. “It’s the public policy of Texas that the recoverable oil and gas in the state’s reservoirs be recovered because it is in the public interest.”
In January, the three elected members of the Railroad Commission voted unanimously to approve the permit and allow flaring for another 12 months.
Mounting evidence shows that gas stoves — used in nearly 40% of U.S. homes — pose serious health risks.
Now, Coloradans have a new tool to learn about the dangers of cooking with little blue flames. Gas stoves sold in the state will need a yellow health-warning label under a first-in-the-nation law that went into effect earlier this month.
“It’s fair to warn people, especially if they have health impacts from [poor] air quality, to know what they’re buying in advance,” said state Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat who cosponsored the legislation.
Like other gas-burning appliances and gasoline-burning cars, gas ranges spew noxious compounds such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. Even off, they emit benzene, a potent carcinogen found in secondhand cigarette smoke; breathing in the fumes from gas ranges increases the risk of cancer, especially in kids. Children in homes with gas stoves are also estimated to be 42% more likely to develop asthma.
“We know that this information has not been reaching the public at the point of sale,” said Kirsten Schatz, public advocate at the nonprofit CoPIRG Foundation.
Since the 1970s, fossil-fuel companies have cited industry-backed research and hired scientists to discount evidence that gas stoves cause harm, according to an investigation by NPR. In 2024, the U.S. gas-stove market was estimated at $3.8 billion. In a 2022 survey of retail stores in 10 states, public advocacy group U.S. PIRG, affiliated with CoPIRG, found that most salespeople said they were unaware of the health risks of gas stoves.
Manufacturers have thrown up a hurdle to the new rules; they’ve asked the federal district court in Colorado to freeze the law’s enforcement. Violators would normally face an up to $20,000 fine, but on Wednesday, the state’s attorney general agreed not to enforce the rules until the court reaches a decision, according to Abe Scarr, energy and utilities program director at PIRG.
Though Colorado is the first state to mandate warning labels, Massachusetts and New York could be next. Last year, proposals in Illinois and California both failed, though the Golden State got close; ultimately, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed the bill.
Colorado’s new requirements follow other policies — from building ordinances to performance standards to air-quality regulations — adopted at state and municipal levels to rein in the sale of gas equipment. More than 70 local governments are ensuring gas appliances aren’t installed in most new buildings by requiring new construction to be all-electric. In July, New York became the first state to codify such rules.
Under Colorado’s law, gas-stove warning labels need to bear the phrase, “Understand the air quality implications of having an indoor gas stove.” The stickers will have a URL link or QR code that directs curious consumers to a state webpage. Colorado requires that the site, created and maintained by its Department of Public Health and Environment, provides “credible, evidence-based information on the health impacts of gas-fueled stoves.”
The warnings only need to be displayed on floor models or the website on which they’re being sold, Kipp said. “We made it really simple for manufacturers to comply,” she added, but still, “they just don’t want to do it.”
In a federal lawsuit filed Aug. 5, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers alleges that Colorado is compelling its members to endorse a warning label that directs consumers to “non-consensus, scientifically controversial, and factually misleading” information. In doing so, the industry group continues, the state is violating its members’ First Amendment rights “to be free from … unconstitutional compelled speech.”
“The lawsuit is frivolous,” Kipp said. “It’s well within the authority of our Colorado legislature to pass laws that implement consumer protections.”
While appliance makers are portraying the science as unsettled, “that’s not true,” Kipp said.
Several nonpartisan nonprofit organizations recognize the large body of peer-reviewed research on gas-stove pollution and have voiced support for warning labels, Schatz said, including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, American Medical Association, and American Thoracic Society.
The parties to the lawsuit are asking for a hearing to be scheduled in early November, Scarr said. They’ve also agreed to a deposition — sworn testimony outside the courtroom — of any witness whom appliance manufacturers rely on to make their case.
“This litigation is set to become a battle of the experts regarding the health impacts of gas stoves,” Scarr said. “Given the science, we’re confident the state can win.”
Gas stoves increase the chances of getting cancer, with nearly double the risk for kids than for adults.
That’s the stark top-line finding of a recent study by a team of researchers from Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; and other organizations. The study builds on prior work by the group that found that gas stoves emit benzene, a potent carcinogen also found in secondhand cigarette smoke — even when the cooking appliances are turned off.
“This is a new piece of evidence that shows that gas cookers are toxic for your health and that something needs to be done,” said Juana María Delgado-Saborit, head of the environmental health research laboratory at the Jaume I University in Spain, who was not involved in the study. “We know that benzene exposure is associated with cancer. … [The authors] have put a number on ‘How big is the problem?’”
The work is just the latest in a growing body of peer-reviewed research demonstrating that gas-burning stoves and other appliances harm not only future generations with their planet-warming emissions but also have direct health consequences for people who use them now. These appliances spew a wide range of pollutants, including deadly carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides linked to respiratory diseases.
Around the U.S., cities and states are taking steps to limit new gas appliances. New York state is pursuing standards to ensure most new buildings will be all-electric. And in California, updates to infrastructure rules and a supportive statewide energy code are already tipping the economics toward all-electric construction.
But efforts to encourage clean cooking also face strong political headwinds. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed a bill last year to label gas stoves with a health warning. On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose” gas stoves. And at the U.S. Capitol this week, the Republican-controlled House proposed axing federal tax credits that currently make it easier for Americans to choose more energy-efficient, all-electric appliances.
In the new study, the team used benzene measurements from gas stoves in 87 homes, analyzing the health risks for the highest-emitting 5% of stoves by modeling how the carcinogen lingers in different rooms across several types of U.S. housing.
There’s no safe level of benzene exposure. But a common statistical limit for an acceptable level of exposure to the chemical is one person in a million getting cancer over a 70-year lifetime.
Researchers found the added lifetime cancer risk associated with benzene from gas stoves is much higher. For example, in homes that use gas stoves often and without ventilation, the risk from just the benzene that drifted into bedrooms ranged from about two to 12 in a million additional cancer cases for children and from about one to six in a million for adults, according to the modeling.
Accounting for exposure across the whole home, gas stove benzene increased cancer risk for kids by up to 1.85 times the risk for adults.
Ventilating with a high-efficiency range hood or by opening the windows could help decrease the risk, the team found, but couldn’t eradicate it completely.
“The only way to eliminate the exposure is to replace a gas or propane stove with a non-emitting induction or other electric stove,” Rob Jackson, senior author of the study and Earth systems professor at Stanford, told Canary Media.
About 38% of U.S. households cook with blue flames. Across those roughly 47 million homes, the team estimates that 6.3 million Americans are breathing in benzene from their gas stoves at the levels modelled.
How do you know if your gas stove is one of the most polluting? “You don’t,” Jackson said.
Jackson wants policymakers to incentivize a transition to electric cooking. “The switch from dirty fossil fuels to cleaner electricity will save lives and make us healthier,” he said. “The World Health Organization believes that breathing any extra benzene is bad for us, no matter how small the amount.”
“Who wants to breathe more carcinogenic benzene than we have to?”
On the night of Jan. 2, there was an explosion on a well pad in eastern Ohio’s Guernsey County. In shaky Facebook videos, the volunteer fire department chief warned off “looky-loos,” as a burning tank fed dark, billowing clouds of smoke off in the distance.
The accident happened at the Groh well pad which is operated by Gulfport Engergy. No one was injured in the blast and first responders determined the safest course of action was to let the fire burn itself out. Guernsey County Emergency Management Agency issued an evacuation notice within half a mile of the well pad. The agency lifted its advisory about 14 hours later.
In a statement, Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Karina Cheung said the agency is still investigating the cause of the fire and assessing damage.
“Preliminary findings indicate that one containment tank was affected,” she said. “All produced fluids have been safely removed. There was no release of fluids into the environment and the well pad remains shut down and inactive.”
“There were no reported injuries, no reported impacts to wildlife, and no reported impacts to water,” she added.
But to some, the incident highlights concerns they’ve been raising for years about oil and gas drilling — particularly as exploration expands to state lands.
The Groh well pad sits about five miles from Salt Fork State Park. While the site doesn’t draw from within the park, the accident is a reminder that Salt Fork was recently opened to oil and gas exploration thanks to a 2022 law signed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
Those leases don’t allow well pads within the boundaries of state land, but opponents argue more exploration means more accidents. And with drilling infrastructure creeping closer, they contend, it’s a matter of time before those accidents affect public land.
“These are accidents that have great potential to cause people serious breathing and respiratory illnesses from air emissions alone,” Melinda Zemper from the organization Save Ohio Parks said.
Although she’s quick to note the difference in scale, Zemper compared the accident to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine.
“Sometimes when you have explosions,” she added, “you don’t know what chemicals are going to be released into the soil and the water nearby the well pad.”
The group has organized opposition to drilling leases on public land since state officials began awarding them through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Oil and Gas Land Management Commission.
Gulfport Energy has been awarded seven of those leases in Belmont and Monroe Counties.
Save Ohio Parks argues the recent Groh well pad fire isn’t an isolated incident.
In 2020, Gulfport agreed to a $3.7 million settlement with the U.S. EPA over its operations in Ohio. The company faced $1.7 million in penalties and was directed to invest $2 million in upgrades to reduce emissions at its facilities. The company has also had several accidents in Ohio, primarily related to spilling brine or other drilling fluid. In 2013, state officials fined the company a quarter million dollars over leaks at seven well pads in Belmont and Harrison Counties.
Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Gulfport Energy but got no response.
Taking a step back, the organization FracTracker argued the Groh well pad explosion is a symptom of a broader problem. In an analysis of incident records from 2015 to 2023, Gwen Klenke found at least 1,900 well-related incidents reported in Ohio.
“I think the larger context is just that this industry is prone to accidents,” she said, “and that there will be accidents as we start to frack and extract on state lands — not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
The bulk of incidents Klenke documented have to do with release or discharge — of gas, brine or other chemicals involved in drilling. Nearly 160 of those incidents are classified as explosions or fires, but only two reference injury or property damage. Under ODNR designations, only three incidents are classified as major or severe since 2018.
Ohio Oil and Gas Association President Rob Rob Brundrett points to the lack of major incidents as “a testament to the industry’s rigorous safety standards and practices.”
“Considering that only .004 percent of ALL Ohio oil and gas operations have had a major reportable incident during that timeframe, I have, and will continue to, put our industry’s safety numbers against any other labor-intensive industry in Ohio,” he added.
But Klenke argues that low number of major incidents points to shortcomings in reporting and classification rather than a strong safety record. Kathiann Kowalski from the Energy News Network highlighted ODNR’s classification system in a 2023 report as well.
The agency relies on a matrix to determine the severity of an incident, but its criteria are subjective and complex. Does the burned-out tank at the Groh well pad constitute “moderate” or “major” on-site equipment damage? If the fire burned for at least 14 hours, does that push it into the category of a major incident (12-24 hours to control impact) or does the apparent lack of off-site spillage ratchet it down to a minor incident?
In her report, Klenke points to two other incidents involving explosions at homes that involved injuries. Because the reporting system allows just one category, they were listed as “explosion/fire,” but they could’ve also been listed as “injury” or “property damage” among other designations.
Klenke explained neither incident was listed as “major” or “severe” under ODNR’s designations.
“They were calling those moderate or minor explosions,” she said, “when those should really be considered major if they’re damaging property, they’re damaging folks’ health.”
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
OIL & GAS: A well pad explosion about five miles from an Ohio state park highlights advocates’ safety concerns about recent efforts to open more state-owned lands for drilling. (Ohio Capital Journal)
COAL: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says he would support repealing ratepayer subsidies for coal plants that were included in House Bill 6 as the General Assembly starts energy policy debates in a new session. (Toledo Blade)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CARBON CAPTURE: North Dakota landowners appeal the state’s approval of an underground carbon storage area tied to a planned carbon pipeline, claiming regulators withheld information and violated state law in the process. (North Dakota Monitor)
COMMENTARY:
OIL & GAS: An Arizona county votes to reverse its zoning designation that cleared the way for a proposed natural gas peaker plant near homes following stiff opposition from residents and advocates. (Arizona Republic)
PUBLIC LANDS: The Biden administration proposes banning new oil and gas and geothermal development on 264,000 acres of federal land in the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. (news release)
UTILITIES:
WIND:
SOLAR:
CARBON CAPTURE: The U.S. EPA greenlights a developer’s proposal to inject and sequester captured carbon in a southern California oil field. (Californian)
POLITICS: Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus-dominated legislature prepares to consider legislation relating to nuclear waste, enhanced oil production, coal severance taxes and utility wildfire liability limits. (WyoFile)
TRANSITION: A nonpartisan research firm finds complex federal grant applications hinder Wyoming coal communities’ ability to access energy transition funds. (Inside Climate News)
CLEAN ENERGY: A study finds clean energy-generated power exceeded California’s electricity demand during a record-breaking 98 of 116 days last spring and summer without experiencing significant outages. (Electrek)
EMISSIONS: Colorado regulators consider proposed rules aimed at curbing landfills’ methane emissions. (CPR)
COAL: The private equity firms that now own a large, polluting Ohio coal plant say in regulatory filings that the facility “will continue to operate for so long as they are legally able to do so on an economic basis.” (Ohio Capital Journal)
SOLAR:
NUCLEAR:
UTILITIES: Xcel Energy customers will see a temporary 5.2% electric rate hike in 2025 as the utility requests a larger increase to help pay for grid improvements and its transition off fossil fuels. (Star Tribune)
CLEAN ENERGY: The $700 billion in tax credits expected from the Inflation Reduction Act will motivate $2 trillion in private investment and produce trillions of dollars in net benefits, according to a study commissioned by the American Clean Power Association. (Utility Dive)
PIPELINES:
POWER PLANTS: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs a bill creating long-term tax incentives for large data centers, including for facilities built on former power plant properties. (Michigan Advance)
EFFICIENCY: While federal tax rebates for residential heat pumps may go away under the Trump administration, both red and blue states could continue incentive programs based on their popularity, experts say. (MPR News)
COMMENTARY: The head of Indiana’s recently created green bank says the organization will provide low-cost financing for small clean energy projects and help ease energy cost pressures amid rising inflation. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)
CLIMATE: As President-elect Trump seeks to dismantle U.S. climate policy, advocates note the 2009 EPA finding declaring greenhouse gases a threat to public health has already survived numerous legal challenges as the science underpinning it has become more robust. (E&E News)
ALSO: Maine has become the latest state to sue major oil and gas companies, alleging they withheld information about the environmental impact of fossil fuels in order to pursue profit. (New York Times)
CLEAN ENERGY:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Rivian appears likely to restart construction of its Georgia factory after receiving a nearly $6 billion federal loan, resparking tension for Republican leaders between applauding the company’s investment and criticizing federal support for clean energy. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
OIL & GAS: Analysts say Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada will increase gasoline prices as much as 75 cents per gallon as many U.S. refineries are engineered to specifically handle Canadian crude; meanwhile, industry groups are pushing for exemptions. (E&E News)
EQUITY: Environmental justice groups worry that millions in federal grants aimed at increasing climate resilience in disinvested communities will not be disbursed before the Trump administration can end the program. (Inside Climate News)
OFFSHORE WIND: A French energy company has paused its plans to build an offshore wind farm off New York and New Jersey for at least four years, citing Trump’s opposition to wind as a major factor. (New York Post)
SOLAR:
COAL: The Biden administration finalizes rules blocking new federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, but Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon says he will work with the incoming Trump administration to overturn the ban. (The Hill, news release)
COMMENTARY: A California columnist says popular bakeries’ opposition helped sink Berkeley’s natural gas-tax ballot measure, and urges the restaurant industry to work together to electrify. (Los Angeles Times)
INDUSTRY: A new report links coal-powered steel plants, including one outside Pittsburgh, to increased asthma symptoms, cancer rates, and other health effects. (Inside Climate News)
NUCLEAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: Power plant owners tell federal regulators they support PJM Interconnection’s plans to delay its capacity auctions while it creates new capacity market rules but fear the pause will hurt investor confidence. (Utility Dive)
EFFICIENCY:
SOLAR: Sunrun launches a virtual power plant program with a downstate New York utility that ties together more than 300 solar-plus-storage installations. (PV Magazine)
POLITICS:
OFFSHORE WIND: GE Vernova says its offshore wind business just finished its strongest quarter in years, but the failure of a Vineyard Wind turbine blade and the company’s need to replace other components posed huge challenges. (RTO Insider, subscription; E&E News, subscription)
EMISSIONS: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul defends her pause of New York City’s congestion pricing plan even as funding for the city’s public transit system falls into further danger. (Times Union)
FOSSIL FUELS: Pennsylvania health officials published studies linking fracking to numerous detrimental health effects over a year ago, but advocates say the state has done nothing to make relevant changes. (Daily Climate)
ALSO: In New Jersey, a public pressure campaign mounted against a planned gas-fired plant in an environmental justice community results in hundreds of calls and emails to the commission behind it. (NJ Spotlight)
GRID:
WIND: The announcement that the Gulf of Maine will soon see its first offshore wind lease auction has renewed calls from the New England fishing community for more environmental review to understand potential impacts on their business. (Boston Herald, subscription)
MINING: Environmental advocates suggest that a Pennsylvania company’s faltering plans to extract lithium from wastewater raise questions about the industry’s viability. (Inside Climate News)
BUILDINGS:
SOLAR: A northeastern Maine town extends a temporary moratorium on new medium-to-large-scale solar projects by 180 days past its initial Oct. 5 expiration date. (Bar Harbor Story)
UTILITIES: Maryland utility regulation staff say the commission should revise the multi-year rate plan framework to better suit ratepayers, but several Exelon utilities claim the current format benefits customers and state policy. (Utility Dive)
RENEWABLE ENERGY:
GEOENGINEERING: The rise and fall of an aquaculture-turned-carbon removal startup with offices in Maine underscores the promise and problems with trying to geoengineer our way out of climate change. (Canary Media)
TRANSPORTATION: Maine officials pause plans to expand a turnpike in the Portland suburbs because of public feedback, which included a desire to add more public transit options and prevent taking land from a historic farm. (WGME, WGME, Portland Press Herald)
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