It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that Democrats would use this opportunity to politicize a disaster.” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said: “The health and safety of Texans during this time of crisis is the Governor’s top concern. Spokesmen for Patrick and Straus did not immediately respond to requests for comment. PAC, Walter White, the CEO of Economy Polymers & Chemicals and the Dow Chemical Company PAC. Besides Morian, other major donors to the top leaders from chemical interests include Lyondell Chemical Co. Since 2013, Patrick has received about $300,000 from chemical interests while Straus received a little more than $30,000, according to TPJ figures. Reed Morian of DX Service Company Inc., whom Abbott appointed to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission in 2015.
That included more than $600,000 from a single chemical company CEO - S. The records again showed a lopsided amount going to the governor - more than $700,000 since 2013. Dan Patrick (16 percent) and House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, (14 percent), came from oil and gas interests.Īt the request of The Texas Tribune, TPJ also ran the numbers on the chemical industry. The report also showed that a significant slice of political contributions to the leader of the Texas Senate, Lt. It was also Abbott who granted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s request to temporarily suspend certain emission reporting requirements for permitted facilities.Īccording to a May report by Texans for Public Justice, a liberal watchdog group, more than one of every five campaign dollars Abbott received from 2013 through 2016 - over $16 million, or 21 percent - came from the oil and gas industry. Greg Abbott, who in 2014 ruled that Texas health officials no longer have to provide citizens with plants’ chemical inventories under state transparency laws. The top recipient of industry money in Texas is Republican Gov. Those leaders have said in the past that campaign money has no role in their decision-making process. Along flood-stricken petrochemical row near the Houston ship channel, meanwhile, city officials detected a huge spike in cancer-causing benzene outside a refinery this week - while the state’s environmental protection agency temporarily suspended certain spill and emission reporting rules in Harvey’s wake.Ĭritics point to a common thread in the light-handed regulations from state government: campaign money from oil and chemical companies flowing like floodwaters into the coffers of top Texas leaders.
In Crosby, on the outskirts of Houston, French-owned Arkema refused to provide the public an inventory of tthe substances inside its chemical plant even as they were burning and causing mandatory evacuations. Just pray Laura doesn’t linger along the coast like Harvey did.Unlike any past storm - natural or man-made - Hurricane Harvey has exposed the fault lines between the politically powerful Texas petrochemical industry and the public’s right to know what dangers lie within their facilities. If that’s the case, then the impacts on gasoline prices would be minimal. Most refiners are estimating that their facility operations will be put back online by the weekend.
With any luck, the flood prevention measures employed by all of these refineries will prove to be adequate to contain any potential environmental damage similar to that caused by Harvey, whose floodwaters caused the release of millions of gallons of polluted water into the Houston Ship Channel and other waterways. By contrast, Harvey lingered over Houston for parts of five days, ravaging the region with as much as 51 inches of rainfall. The positive news about Laura, from a refinery standpoint, is that it is projected to quickly move north after making landfall overnight, thus minimizing the amount of potentially-flooding rains it is likely to drop on the Gulf Coast area. The storm is currently projected by NOAA to make landfall as Category 3 storm, carrying winds well over 100 mph and a very significant projected storm surge.Īs a result, refiners up and down the coast have spent the past 48 hours or so preparing to shut their facilities down, which is the standard procedure in such a situation. The refineries in this area were devastated by Harvey’s flooding, and, as things stand on Wednesday morning, Hurricane Laura is on a path to hit that cluster of refineries again. A quick look at the EIA refinery map above shows a huge cluster of large-capacity refineries located from Houston east to Lake Charles, Louisiana.
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