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UPDATE (9/6/16) Texas environmental regulators are strongly pushing back on this recent Clean Air Task force and Earthworks report, noting that their data do not square with the actual science. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:

“State regulators say emissions from oil and gas operations are not a major contributor to air pollution in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, calling into question a recent environmental report linking methane leaks to an anticipated rise in asthma attacks.

[…]

But Texas Commission on Environmental Quality data shows that operations associated with the energy industry in Fort Worth and Dallas contribute 1.8 parts per billion to ozone levels on the worst days, from May to September, while planes, trains and automobiles contribute 14.1 parts per billion. Those measurements also were taken during the peak times of the ozone season, agency officials said.” (Emphasis added)

The Star-Telegram goes on:

“David Brymer, the agency’s director of air quality, voiced doubts about how Earthworks and the Clean Air Task Force used its computer models to produce the information and then how they analyzed that data. Brymer cautioned that they have insufficient information to entirely evaluate the environmental report.”

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) officials are also calling the assumptions used in the report into question by pointing to steps the state has been taking to curb ozone-forming emissions. As EID had previously pointed out, a big problem with the report was the reliance on 2011 EPA emissions estimates that failed to take new state and federal emissions rules and regulations into account. Also from the Star-Telegram:

“Since nitrogen oxides are the dominant precursors for ozone in Texas, not methane, the state has taken vigorous steps to control it, Brymer and other agency officials said. In 2007, the agency issued rules that resulted in a 93 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide, agency officials said.” (Emphasis added)

And state officials say those reductions were achieved at a time when oil and natural gas development ...