In this six-part series, we explore the ongoing oil, gas, and petrochemical boom in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast. It is a story of runaway toxic infrastructure, environmental injustice, and climate overshoot. Sign up below to get notifications of future releases.
Throughout this website we track the Permian Basin’s oil and gas development, impacts, and possible futures. We will explore the climate impact of the Permian boom, the public health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of fracking, the Permian Basin’s link to environmental injustice and petrochemical expansion on the Gulf Coast, and the flow of Permian hydrocarbons to export markets. We will continue to monitor and highlight the development of expansion-enabling infrastructure, such as pipelines and export terminals, and uplift the stories of the people confronting the assault this infrastructure places upon communities.
To head off climate catastrophe, oil and gas production and consumption must decline. The opposite is happening in the Permian Basin. Production has more than quadrupled in the past decade, and despite the COVID crisis, is still expected to grow aggressively in the coming decade. Weaning America and the world off oil and gas is much harder if production keeps growing. Yet, the Permian Basin could produce more oil, gas, and gas liquids in the next 30 years than it has in the past century.
“Every incremental hydrocarbon produced [in the Permian Basin] from this day forward — whether it’s oil, liquids or gas, needs to be exported.” The LNG executive that made this statement was not wrong. In 2020, over 28% of U.S. crude oil production was exported, with the vast majority of those exports coming from the Permian. That figure was 4% before crude oil export restrictions were lifted in 2015. The explosive growth in the Permian Basin simply could not have happened if the export ban had not been lifted, as U.S. refineries simply couldn’t have absorbed all the oil.
Likewise, the surging gas production that has accompanied Permian oil drilling has exceeded U.S. demand. As a result, a massive number of LNG processing and export facilities are planned for the U.S. Gulf Coast.
While gas liquids are generally processed in the U.S., exports of propane and ethane have soared, along with the raw materials feeding the plastics boom.
These three different hydrocarbons each require different pipelines to move them from the Permian Basin to export facilities on the Gulf Coast. This has led to an unprecedented build-out of pipelines in recent years, as well as a vast amount of processing plants and other industrial infrastructure. Yet more are planned.
Huge quantities of gas liquids are produced as a byproduct of oil drilling in the Permian. At around 1.5 million bpd, the Permian Basin produced more gas liquids in 2019 than any other country or basin in the world. Gas liquids have to be separated from oil and gas, transported in dedicated pipelines, and then processed into separate products, including ethane, propane and butane, among others.
The abundance of ethane from the Permian Basin is fueling an explosion in plastic processing and manufacturing along the Gulf Coast. Communities already burdened with toxic chemical plants are seeing expansions and new plants raising their toxic burden higher than ever. This plastics production boom ignores the outcry of communities and governments worldwide over the crisis of plastic pollution, which already is overwhelming the world’s oceans, threatening the survival of countless species, and causing immeasurable harm to public health and ecosystems worldwide.
The surge in cheap ethane has crashed the price of virgin plastics, disrupting the market in recycled plastic feedstock and undermining attempts to improve plastic recycling rates and develop a circular economy.
Over two million people call the Permian Basin home. Tens of millions more live on the Gulf Coast and along the pipeline routes that connect the Permian with its key markets. Communities living close to extraction sites are exposed to toxic air and water. Roaring flares light their night skies. Heavy truck traffic destroys their roads and poses heightened safety risks to their everyday lives. On the Gulf Coast, refineries, export terminals, and petrochemical plants are proliferating in marginalized communities that have long borne the toxic burden of our dependence on oil and gas.
Across the region, people are resisting the industry’s heavy footprint. But they often face a wall of indifference from compliant regulators, politicians, and the judiciary. Nonetheless, they persist.
Production growth isn’t the only reason the Permian Basin poses such a threat to our climate. The fracking business model coupled with insufficient environmental regulation, leads to massive amounts of methane gas vented and flared, making Permian oil and gas operations some of the dirtiest in the world. The intensity of drilling, water, sand, and chemical use, and the lack of regulatory oversight is turning the basin into an industrial wasteland. The quality of life for many residents is deteriorating as everything from agriculture, ranching, tourism and recreation, and basic health and safety has become secondary to the industry’s pursuit of growth.
President Biden claims he wants to combat the climate crisis and make environmental justice a core part of his legacy, but his agencies are approving permits for pipelines, export terminals, refineries, petrochemical facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure.
Join us to demand President Biden immediately deny new oil and gas infrastructure permits.
Fracking is driving fossil fuel expansion and environmental injustice in the Permian Basin and the Gulf Coast, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Congress can ban fracking nationwide, which would make a tremendous impact limiting harms in the Permian.
Join us to urge your Member of Congress to cosponsor the Fracking Ban Act.
The Permian Basin extends onto federal public lands, where the Department of the Interior holds jurisdiction. President Biden has committed to end new fossil fuel leases and permits on public lands, but he hasn’t yet followed through on this promise.
Join us to demand the Department of the Interior end new oil and gas permits on public lands.
Grassroots groups on the frontlines of the Permian Basin’s exploitation are protecting their communities, fighting back against the fossil fuel industry, and working for a just transition. They are underfunded and addressing systemic crises of racism, disinvestment, mounting climate impacts, and more.
Donate to the grassroots groups leading this fight.
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