Climate change trumps pipeline opposition

Little annoys me more than selfishness masquerading as environmentalism, and there are few better examples than opposition to natural gas pipelines.

Good and privileged people living in the picturesque Texas Hill Country are trying to stop the installation of a 42-inch, underground pipeline that will take natural gas from the Permian Basin through a critical aquifer to the Gulf Coast. Once there, much of the gas will be liquified and loaded onto ships sailing around the world.

Do the certain environmental risks and social impact of planting a pipeline through Central Texas outweigh the benefit of delivering natural gas to the global market? The answer depends on how you feel about climate change.

Folks living in the Hill Country have a long history of opposing infrastructure projects. Many tried to block the major transmission lines that deliver wind energy from West Texas to Austin, San Antonio and Houston. They didn’t want the towers to spoil their views.

The Permian Highway Pipeline is a similar energy project. Some residents do not want trenches dug through their little piece of heaven on earth, and they complain that a pipeline would endanger the Edwards Aquifer, a limestone formation that 4 million people depend on for drinking water.

The Edwards is a karst aquifer, which is like agiant stone sponge. Karst is unsuitable for pipelines, and Houston-based Kinder Morgan should find another route, said Chuck Lesniak, former environmental officer for Austin, where he reviewed pipeline permits among other duties.

“The rock does not support the pipe,” argued Lesniak, who now consults for the Texas Real Estate Advocacy and Defense Coalition, a bipartisan landowner rights group. “Other pipelines have gone either north around central Texas or south of San Antonio, and I think there’s a reason for that.”

Unlike some environmentalists, Lesniak and TREAD say they do not oppose pipelines. They simply want this pipeline to run through someone else’s backyard, specifically, through the backyards of poor people of color south of San Antonio or under less valuable real estate north of Austin.

Kinder Morgan, which plans to build and operate the pipeline, insists they’ve struck the right balance between constructability, environmental risk, profit potential and landowner disruption, said Allen Fore, vice president for public affairs.

A pipeline must win permit approval from Texas regulators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife. The project must be cheap enough to make financial sense and affect the fewest number of landowners possible.

Fore said the company held dozens of public meetings, personally met with every affected landowner, hired a top expert on karst aquifers to supervise construction and has come up with a plan that makes money. Kinder Morgan has already made 150 route adjustments, but there is a limit to how much it can change and remain profitable.

“The interest of all parties, including the developer and the operator, which is us, is to have a pipeline that’s compatible with the areas where we’re constructing,” Fore said. “After 26,000 miles, we’ve seen all types of terrains in the state of Texas, not to mention our 80,000 miles of pipeline we have across the country.”

Pipelines do break, despite best efforts. While they are the safest method for energy transport, a spill can do real damage. The question becomes about risk. A review of the 810 miles of existing pipeline in Central Texas proves it is low.

The ongoing, genuine environmental damage from not building natural gas pipelines out of the Permian is indisputable.

Last year, wells in the Permian burned 14.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas, flooding the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and a fair bit of methane, both greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet.

Permian drillers have no choice but to flare because gas comes up with crude oil, and there are not enough pipelines to deliver the gas to market.

Most experts agree that the only way to slow global warming in the short term is to replace coal with natural gas. If delivered to the Gulf Coast, Permian gas could displace thousands of coal-fired power plants around the world, dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change’s destruction is a clear and present danger, while a leaky natural gas pipe in Central Texas is only a potential problem. If you deny climate change is real, take the side of the landowners and block the pipeline. Otherwise, get out of the way. There are bigger fish to fry.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy. chris.tomlinson @chron.com twitter.com/cltomlinson