The Denton fracking ban shocked the world: We were a small Texas town that stood up to big oil and gas despite the fact that they outspent our grass-roots group 15 to 1. The industry sued the city the morning after the vote. Fearing that the ban would be upheld under the existing legal regime, however, they put most of their efforts into a legislative end run, using their outsize influence in Austin to change the rules of the game. Over the next several months the industry bought itself a new law. Known widely as HB 40, it declares that the state of Texas expressly preempts (trumps) regulations written by local governments. Cities and towns can only pass laws that the industry deems to be “commercially reasonable.”
HB 40 has been talked about as a ban on local fracking bans, but the impetus behind it is far more nefarious. It is an attempt to upend the long Texas tradition of local control over oil and gas, a tradition that prioritized community well-being over profits. It is the product of forces that are trying to disenfranchise communities across the state and roll back hard-won protections for health and safety. The industry is setting the stage for a renewed onslaught of fracking once they begin exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe and Asia where they can make much more money than on the saturated domestic market.