The Petrochemical Circle of Smog

Here's a piece by Texas Tribune off-shoot "State Impact" that more or less revels in the news that the Shale boom in Texas and elsewhere is now finally making its presence felt in the petrochemical capital of the world  – the Houston Ship Channels and surrounding communities long the Gulf Coast. Fracking has made natural gas and its condensates so cheap and plentiful that billions are being spent to build new plastics manufacturing and processing plants. It's the "re-birth of the U.S. petro-chemical industry," to quote one producer.

Already the hub of something like 60% of all petrochemical capacity in the US, the Houston/Harris County area has an on-going historical struggle with air pollution. Residents who live near huge facilities like the Exxon-Mobil Baytown Refinery are always on guard against catastrophic accidents, much less the daily or weekly indignities of breathing its perfectly legal voluminous air pollution. Much of the pollution is not only toxic but also adds to Houston's smog problems.

These new Shale-driven facilities, while cleaner than their older counterparts, will nevertheless be adding tens of thousands of tons of new air pollution to the Houston skies. That's going to complicate things for getting cleaner air in Houston. They haven't really mastered how to have clean air after the first birth of the petrochemical industry, much less a rebirth.

DFW is downwind of Houston. When it's harder for Houston to achieve cleaner air, it's also harder for DFW.  What else makes it harder for DFW to achieve cleaner air? Large new sources of Un-and-under-regulated emissions from Shale gas mining.

So gas is mined and processed here in North Texas, where it adds to a chronic air quality problem for us. Then it's shipped to Houston, where it's use in making new plastic adds to chronic air quality problems for that city, as well as returning via predominate winds during ozone season to further contribute to deteriorating air quality here in DFW. It's the Petrochemical Circle of Smog.