Given how late this blog post is coming, I’m not even going to bother. It didn’t go well. The big thing I’ve realized is that my actions in the past have serious ramifications for me right now. Sounds obvious, but a week of blowing off school obligations to be “extra” productive is almost always followed by a week of zero productivity. not doing that shit again.
I’ll add goals in 0x5.
Since I’m turning 18 this year and gaining the ability to vote, I figured it was time to do my due diligence as an american citizen and investigate the policies of the people I’d elect to represent me. I found a list of offices up for election this year and the first office I saw was the Texas Railroad Commission.
With a boring name like the Railroad Commission I expected half an hour of googling about a couple of boring train focused bureaucrats. I was very wrong.
First of all, the Texas Railroad Commission (or the RRC) has nothing to do with any goddamn railroads. They did at their inception 130 years ago but as time went on, other government bodies stripped them of this power. Since 2005, the RRC has solely been focused on regulating the energy industry.
Specifically they are
The state agency with primary regulatory jurisdiction over the oil and natural gas industry, pipeline transporters, natural gas and hazardous liquid pipeline industry, natural gas utilities, the LP-gas industry, critical natural gas infrastructure, and coal and uranium surface mining operations.
(Taken directly from their website)
So this means that that despite it’s name, the RRC is way more influential than railroads. In fact, before the rise of globalization they largely set world oil prices. At the peak of it’s powers in the ’50s, the RRC controlled a whopping 40% of US oil!
Daughter of the longest serving member of any state legislature Tom Craddick (Who also chairs the state committee that oversees his daughter’s position), She has a law degree which she obtained from UT Austin. She’s served as a commissioner for the RRC for two terms, and is the current incumbent.
Both Craddick’s have significant financial interests within the oil industry. In one year alone they gained an estimated 10 million dollars from their oil holdings across Texas. Their holdings themselves have a value of 20 million in total.
Tom Craddick is a “deal maker” between oil companies. He brings them together to buy and sell leases on wells. For this work, he takes a cut of the profits from the well. Essentially a middleman.
About their a supposed conflicts of interest the Craddick’s had to say this:
[Our] experience and knowledge about the industry and our state’s natural resources is one of the reasons why voters have consistently reelected [Us] to public office
the article above says that they cast votes to ensure Texas has a robust oil and gas industry that
promotes energy independence and security and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Craddick Sr. has ties to CrownQuest CEO Tim Dunn who’s a major republican donor who’s a die-hard supporter of the MAGA style of conservativism. Craddick Sr. seems to have extensive even more extensive ties to the oil and gas industry, and it appears to have affected his voting history.
Cristi has multiple documented instances where she hasn’t recused herself from voting on issues where she has a conflict of interest.
The Craddicks hold overiding royalty shares in many of the wells that they own. In a nutshell, these are usually the share’s you’d give to middlemen like Craddick to let them take a cut of the profits of the oil sold from the well. These shares can be “washed out” and removed via some legal fuckery. Craddick Sr. introduced a bill in 2021 to prevent washout and protect middlemen in a pretty clear conflict of interest. The best part is, he told no one that most of his wealth was tied up in these shares and the bill passed both chambers of the Texas legislature! It was later vetoed by Governor Abbot, but Craddick has taken steps to reintroduce the bill and get it passed through again.
Cristi was able to raise near double what her first opponent was able to, and has won each election she’s been in with around a 10% margin.
So after learning all this, I’d decided that Cristi Conflict-of-Interest Craddick had to go.
Two of the repbublican candiates had zero information about their policies online that I could find, and Petra Reyes’ site spends more time on her backstory than it does on her actual campaign. She also has significant ties to the Midland region (which Craddick represents) and doesn’t really raise any specific issues.
Out of the two democratic candidates, I instinctively prefer Culbert more. Her webpage gives more info about her goals and is more informative than Burch’s.
Her 3 prorities:
Ultimately I don’t understand enough about the issues or her position to really make any comments. She gets general positive vibes from me.
His site is pretty much a big nothing burger, and I considered adding him to the ignore pile with paper thin Petra, but he had just enough for me to keep him around.
His campaign is centered around environmentalism and transparency as well, but he provides pretty vague assurances on how he’ll communicate with all stakeholders or something. His social media is much more active (more active than Culburt’s), and he seems to have more concrete policy positions there. He’s also received more endorsements than Culburt and looks to be the democratic front runner.
My gut favorite candidate, Matock has strong opinions about the Texas oil and gas industry. He says his slogan is “Don’t tell me there’s an energy crisis when I am still seeing waste and mismanagement!” (Less of a slogan and more of an acute observation). And on his website, he outlines a couple of specific points he wants to address in regard to the energy crisis. However, will his policies really have that big an impact on oil and gas? His solutions seem so cut and dry and common sense. It makes me wonder, If your solutions are so obvious, why wouldn’t we implement them by now?
A key example of this is his stance on “flaring.” Flaring is when waste natural gas is burned into the atmosphere. Matock wants to eliminate flaring and utilize the extra Natural Gas. Yet from some quick research, it seems like capturing this extra gas is technically possible, just not economically feasible. I’ve done some light digging (i.e. the first page of google) into a few other of Matock’s proposed solutions, and it seems like there’s more nuance that he’s missing. I also question his the relevance of his experience when it comes to these technical questions (It looks like he was a truck driver?).
Matock is concerned for the environment, but his primary concern seems to be the financial aspect of the oil and gas industry. Which is justifiable. Right now we (probably) don’t have any ready alternatives to fossil fuels, but I worry that Matock isn’t concerned enough for the environment and in his attempt to eliminate “waste and mismanagement” he might end up doing more damage to the environment than Craddick.
So I remain hopefully skeptical on Matock.
Ultimately, after doing all this research I’m left with more questions than answers.
Until I can answer the first two I don’t really think I can choose a candidate. I’ll keep digging, and let you know how it goes.