Proposed pipeline raising concerns for West Texas communities in its path

Of the 4,500 or so oil and gas pipelines that already crisscross Texas, this would be one of the very biggest: four feet in diameter, running from a West Texas gas collection hub, west by southwest until it crosses the Rio Grande, moving natural gas destined for places like Japan, China and Chile.

It’s so much natural gas that the stuff moving through this pipeline would be enough to power 30% of Texas electrical grid every day, year round.

But when state and federal officials signed off on this massive project, they left something out of the planning process, namely the towns and people along the pipeline’s path.

Russell Gold writes for Texas Monthly, and he recently raised a much larger and important question: when is a pipeline in the public interest? He joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Someone’s going to be making some money here. This would essentially move natural gas to a point in Mexico off the Baja California coast, I gather. Is that right?

Russell Gold: Yeah, absolutely. On the gulf of California. And it will be cooled and put onto tankers and sent over to China and Japan and other parts of the world to fuel power plants and petrochemical facilities.

Okay. Well, so is it clear who will be making the money out of this?

Well, sure. There’s a company in Houston called Mexico Pacific Limited. They are building this project, and what they’re going to do is they’re going to sell what’s called “capacity” to big companies you probably have heard of. I think Exxon has taken a bit of the capacity. I think Shell maybe also.

I mean, some of the big oil and gas companies will be the ones that are going to be buying this West Texas gas and reselling it across the Pacific Ocean.

So who signed off on this? I guess federal energy regulators have to give the green light. What about state officials?

Absolutely. The railroad commission has to approve. Well, I should put “approve” in quotes because the process for approving a pipeline in Texas – an intrastate pipeline – is pretty minimal.

When I asked the railroad commission about it, they said that Oneok – which is a Tulsa company that’s going to be building the pipeline on the U.S. side – all they really have to do is fill out a one-page permit and attach an electric map and basically say, “this is where the pipeline’s going to run.” The railroad commission said essentially it’s kind of a “check the box” routine. And in fact, it’s so perfunctory that Oneok forgot probably the most important bit of information, which is how many miles the pipeline would be, which is needed for, taxing purposes.

So about three weeks later, they realized their mistake, and they found the addendum which basically said, “oh, oops, we forgot to put in this basic piece of information. Here it is.” And a couple days later, the railroad commission approved it.

So, you know, both on the state and the federal side, there’s really not a huge amount of oversight that goes into something like this, which is amazing considering how much gas we’re talking about and how big an infrastructure project.

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

I’m thinking, though, if they were to design a pipeline that ran straight through Dallas, maybe cut over into Austin and went out toward Houston, there would be a little bit more, I don’t know, consideration about public feedback in the process.

You know, probably. So we certainly have seen pipelines going from the Permian Basin, cutting across Texas down into Corpus and Houston. And those do tend to get more pushback. And part of that is because you’ve got more landowners.

You know, when you head from Fort Stockton west, you’ve got some very big ranches out there. You only have to deal with a small number of landowners. When you cut through the Hill Country, it gets a little trickier and there’s a little more pushback. So, yeah, I think you’re probably absolutely right about that.

But I guess the reason I’m even talking about this is because in your story for Texas Monthly, you talk about how this pipeline will run pretty close to Van Horn, and I’m sure other towns and cities and population areas out there in mostly sparsely-populated West Texas. But nonetheless, you have a problem with a pipe this size. This could be a major disaster.

Yeah, the pipeline is going to run about a mile or two south of downtown Van Horn – which most people, if they know it at all, it’s a stop on I-10 on the way out to El Paso.

You know, when I talk to locals there, one of the points they made is like, if there is a problem with…