LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The TREAD lawsuit is about NIMBY’ism – not in my backyard – and not about a constitutional eminent domain process that has worked well for decades, or the Railroad Commission’s process, whose requirements this project has already exceeded. This was apparent when TREAD’s representatives said if we moved the pipeline north of Georgetown or south of San Antonio they wouldn’t file a lawsuit.
This lawsuit takes aim at not just the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP) project, but all infrastructure projects, threatening the very thing that has made the Texas economy the envy of the nation. Oil and natural gas represent almost 30 percent of the Texas gross domestic product. In 2018, the oil and natural gas industry paid more than $14 billion in state and local taxes and state royalties— $38 million a day to fund schools, roads, universities and first responders throughout the entire state. Those revenues allow Texas to increase funding to public schools and give teachers a pay raise. The PHP project alone, and the oil and gas production it will enable, will provide almost $1 billion in additional revenue each year to the state and counties for schools, first responders and other vital needs, and individual leaseholders will receive more than $2 billion per year in new oil and natural gas royalties.
