Texas's chief energy regulator fiercely defended fossil fuels after historic blackouts. She also pro
Late last month, as Texans were digging out from a historic winter storm and days-long power outages, the state’s chief oil and gas regulator had a clear message: Natural gas producers are not responsible for the disaster.
“Some media outlets would have you believe that natural gas producers and frozen transmission lines caused the power shortages across the state,” said Christi Craddick, who chairs a three-member commission overseeing the industry, during a Texas House of Representatives hearing Feb. 26. “But … these operators were not the problem. The oil and gas industry was the solution.”
Craddick and her father, a well-known Republican state representative who sits on two Texas House committees overseeing oil and gas, have direct financial ties to that industry, including with some of the same gas-producing companies that have admitted to shutdowns of their own facilities during the storm.
The father-daughter pair, who hail from Midland — the heart of the West Texas oil and gas boom of the past decade — own and manage land across the state that generated more than $100,000 from Texas’s largest natural gas producers in 2019, according to forms they submitted to the state Ethics Commission last year. The companies include XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, and Pioneer Natural Resources, both of which reported equipment failures during the winter storm.
Critics say the ownership stakes reflect a conflict of interest for the Craddicks and exemplify a major ethics loophole in Texas, where regulators are allowed to have financial interests in the companies they oversee, unlike in some other oil-rich states. The ties are also newly relevant in light of last month’s blackouts, which left more than 9 million Texans without power and may turn out to be the costliest weather event in the state’s history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/19/texass-chief-energy-regulator-fiercely-defended-fossil-fuels-after-historic-blackouts-she-also-profits-oil-gas/
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