American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2015 - 32

vowed that legislators would provide HB
40 with its substance. "This was not going to be a municipal bill nor an industry
bill, he told me. He was adamant that it
would be a legislators' bill and that the
House Energy Resources Committee was
going to fashion something good for
everybody," Stevens recalls. "On the Senate side, I have to credit Fraser for being
very well prepared both in his committee
and on the Senate floor."
Ballot Initiatives
Meanwhile, another local control bill,
HB 2595 by Representative James Keffer,
R-Eastland, was one of the oil and gas in-

dustry's few loose threads still hanging in
the session's final days. According to
Stevens, it seeks to limit initiatives and referenda, and to prohibit a municipality from
certifying a petition that will use those procedures for any ordinance that will take private property or block land access.
"Banning fracturing is tantamount to
taking private property, which we think is
an inappropriate use for initiatives and referenda," he states. "HB 2595 says that if
an ordinance is going to take private
property, it has to be deliberated, and is the
purview of a representative government:
a council, zoning commissions, and people with expertise. It should not be placed
in the venue of public relations, political
campaigns and push polling, which can
lead to a lot of misinformation. Certainly,
HB 2595 has some of the same effects, but
it is a different part of the law in a different process than HB 40."
Although the House approved HB
2595 125-18, Stevens acknowledged in
late May that the bill was stuck in the Senate Natural Resources Committee because some lawmakers questioned the need
for a bill that particularly addressed local
control. "They are saying HB 40 already
passed," he relates. "They are asking
why we want to take away citizens' voices."
Meanwhile, the matter of so-called
"reverse setbacks," in which municipalities such as Denton have granted setback
variances that allow construction closer to
pre-existing wellheads, remains unresolved with the defeat of HB 2991. According to Stevens, the bill reached the
House floor, but failed to meet a legislative deadline in mid-May. "When some of
the wells in Denton were drilled, there was
nothing within 1,000-1,500 feet, but the
city kept granting exceptions to the point
that people would build a house 150 feet
from a wellhead," Stevens reports. "HB
2991 was a great idea, but it went to committee late."
Defeated Bills
Although matters of local control have
constituted the dominant subject for oil and
gas representatives during the 2015 session, Longanecker notes, they hardly exhaust the legislative machinations affecting the state's oil and gas industry.
"TIPRO tracked or lobbied more than 300
bills this session that directly or indirectly affected the Texas oil and natural gas
industry," he reports.
According to Stevens, among the bills
with the Alliance's attention that have
failed is SB 517, by Senator Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio. The bill sought to extend groundwater districts' jurisdiction
over any disposal well within a 10-mile ra-

32 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

dius of their boundaries. "We saw real
problems with that," Stevens reports.
"That was bottled up in committee."
Another failed bill, HB 1106, would
have changed the RRC's name to the
Texas Energy Commission. Stevens indicates a number of Alliance members hold
different positions on the prospect, but the
group took no official stance (see story
page 114). "The RRC will be up for sunset review again next session," he reflects.
"I am sure we will get to address that,
along with some hefty subjects as well."
Another bill that lacked industry unanimity and did not pass was HB 1552,
which would have set in statute the RRC's
normal practice with regard to allocation
wells. "Some folks wanted to avoid lawsuits by putting that in the law, but that bill
could not be agreed on in the House
committee and died, unfortunately, after
it had taken a lot of energy," Stevens recounts. "The Alliance was in favor of the
ultimate bill, as long as the way in which
it was written and interpreted did not
negate existing contracts."

Successful Bills
Bills that have passed the 84th Texas
Legislature include SB 12 by Ureste,
which promotes natural gas vehicles with
funds from the Texas Commission on
Environmental Quality's Emissions Reduction Program. According to Stevens, it will
devote $32 million a year to convert state
agency fleets to NGVs and build natural gas
refueling stations. "It has been bracketed
to some of the areas with air-quality problems and to larger fleets that return to the
same place at night," he relates. "It is a good
move for natural gas and the state."
Another successful bill, SB 709 by
Fraser, sets a 180-day deadline by which
an administrative hearings judge must rule
on contested water code permit applications at TCEQ, Stevens reports. It also
places the onus of proof on the party filing the petition. "They have to prove the
case," he describes.
Some have objected that the provision
puts private citizens at a disadvantage,
Stevens adds, but he contends the former
approach essentially forced companies to
meet the logical impossibility of proving
a negative. "That had been our situation for
water and air quality cases," he reflects.
The oil and gas industry also has a particular interest in a rider to SB 2, the supplemental budget bill. According to
Stevens, the provision provides $4.7 million to the University of Texas' Bureau of
Economic Geology to institute TexNet for
the purpose of monitoring and studying the
state's seismic activity. He explains that
a portion of the allocation will go toward

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2015