The approval of the Keystone XL pipeline
The 2014 US Midterm Elections significantly altered the balance of power in the US Congress. As a result, energy policy from now on ranks high on the upcoming Republican majority’s legislative agenda. Indeed, Republican leadership is wasting no time with both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate prepared to take up and vote on the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in a matter of days, according to a report by Reuters.
This, however, has not been the only energy-related result from Election Night 2014.Voters in some communities in California, Ohio, and perhaps most surprisingly in Texas, chose to enact bans on fracking. Clearly, Texas has to be considered the standout here because it leads the nation in growth in oil and natural gas production jobs – this measure includes “extraction, drilling, and support jobs categories the many jobs at oil and natural gas corporate headquarters based in Texas” – as EIA data for the period 2003 through 2013 show.
Denton, a city in North Texas on the edge of the Barnett Shale, became the state’s first toban hydraulicfracturing, or fracking, within its city limits. Barry Stevens writing for Oilprice.com cites the adopted proposition: “Shall an ordinance be enacted prohibiting, within the corporate limits of the city of Denton, Texas, hydraulic fracturing, a well stimulation process involving the use of water, sand and/or chemical additives pumped under high pressure to fracture subsurface non-porous rock formations such as shale to improve the flow of natural gas, oil, or other hydrocarbons into the well, with subsequent high rate, extended flowback to expel fracture fluids and solids.”