Posted on June 24, 2015 by Jeff Civins
The State of Texas took swift action to block a municipality seeking to limit fracking. In response to a 59 to 41% vote of its citizens, in November 2014, the City of Denton adopted an ordinance banning the well completion activity of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which involves the high pressure injection of water, with proppants and small amounts of chemicals, into tight formations thousands of feet below surface to create and prop open fractures that facilitate the flow of oil and gas.
Hours after the ordinance’s adoption, the Texas General Land Office and Texas Oil & Gas Association filed suit in Denton County district court, seeking to declare the ban invalid. They argued that the ordinance intruded on powers granted by the legislature to the Railroad Commission of Texas and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and thus was preempted by state law. On May 18, 2015, before the court could rule on the law suit, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law House Bill 40, which removes the authority of Denton and all other Texas municipalities to regulate not only fracking, but also all other oil and gas operations. On June 17, 2015, in recognition of House Bill 40, Denton’s City Council voted to amend its ordinance by repealing it in its entirety.
In seeking to reconcile the interests of those concerned with state government intruding on local rule with the interests of mineral owners and their lessees concerned with intrusive governmental restrictions on the use of their property, House Bill 40’s approach arguably was solomonesque. In just 3 pages, the bill allowed cities, under certain circumstances, to regulate above ground activities related to oil and gas operations, but barred them from regulating oil and gas operations per se, reserving that regulation to the state.
House Bill 40 declares that oil and gas activities are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, but clarifies that municipalities may adopt an ordinance that regulates above ground activities related to oil and gas operations, including ordinances governing fire and emergency response, traffic, lights, or noise, or imposing reasonable setback requirements. The statute requires, however, that such an ordinance be “commercially reasonable,” not effectively prohibit an “oil and gas operation” conducted by a reasonably prudent operator, and not otherwise be preempted by state or federal law. The statute defines the quoted terms. It also creates a presumption that an ordinance is considered prima facie to be commercially reasonable if it has been in effect for 5-years and has allowed oil and gas operations to continue during that period.
The stated concerns of the Denton ordinance generally related not to fracking, but rather to the above ground impacts of the oil and gas activities it facilitated, that is, things like traffic, lights, noise, and safety concerns. The Denton ordinance did express concern with the potential for contamination of drinking water aquifers, but studies, including EPA’s recently released draft assessment on fracking, generally have shown that concern to be related more to oil and gas activities generally than to the subsurface migration of contaminants associated with fracking per se.
Even in fossil energy friendly Texas, fracking can be controversial. The new state statute allows municipalities to address above ground effects related to oil and gas operations, subject to certain limits to be more fully fleshed out, but reserves to the state the power to regulate oil and gas operations per se. This approach preserves local authority over things that arguably mattered most to the citizens of Denton, while preserving regulation of oil and gas development by the agencies that have historically regulated them.
Tags: hydraulic fracturing, fracking, oil, gas, preemption, municipalities, Texas