Report Questions Texas Regulators’ Handling of Flood-Related Oil ‘Mess’

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Internal emails show Texas energy regulators describing a “mess” of leaking crude oil heading downstream near Houston following heavy storms in May, raising new questions about how the state has handled flood-related spills visible in aerial photographs, a newspaper reported on Aug. 14.

The Texas Railroad Commission did not answer specific questions from the El Paso Times about whether the state levied any fines or if regulators know how much oil had escaped into the San Jacinto River. The agency also would not address whether steps were taken to look for pollution downstream, where upscale houses are nestled against the shoreline.

“All this mess has gone downstream into Lake Houston and maybe beyond; it will also get spread out over whatever it lands upon when the water recedes,” Railroad Commission geoscientist Olin Macnamara wrote to colleagues on June 10. “We may need to prepare for a lot of calls, now that public (access to) these areas is available & folks are going back home.”

How Texas regulators handle flood-related spills is under increasing scrutiny following the release of aerial photographs showing large crude slicks on waterways. The emails were part of documents provided to Democratic state Sen. Jose Rodríguez, who has been questioning regulators’ response to spills photographed statewide by the Texas Civil Air Patrol.

The El Paso lawmaker’s concern followed stories by the El Paso Times earlier this year that detailed inadequacies in the state’s documentation of the spills.

Meredith Miller, senior program coordinator at the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, said she was unimpressed with the level of documentation the Railroad Commission provided Rodriguez.

“My first comment is that their recordkeeping is not particularly informative, is totally antiquated and is riddled with errors and missing information,” Miller told the newspaper in an email. “This is 2016, for Pete’s sake. My citizen scientists keep much better records.”

Among the documents the agency sent Rodríguez was a July 2015 inspection report that describes a spill site on the Trinity River in Houston County. It details oil found in tree branches 50 feet away from a tank battery owned by Warrior Petroleum Corp. But there is no information about whether this was cleaned up, how much oil escaped the site or whether Warrior was fined.

Railroad Commission spokeswoman Ramona Nye did not directly answer when asked why that information was missing.

“Protection of public safety and our natural resources is the Railroad Commission’s highest priority,” Nye told the newspaper in an email. “And the Railroad Commission’s oil and gas rules have been effective in carrying out this mission.”