On May 26, former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French eked out a 1-point victory over incumbent Jim Wright in the Republican runoff for a seat on the state’s poorly named oil and gas regulatory agency: the Railroad Commission (RRC). As the Texas Observer has reported, French, a 56-year-old oil-industry nepo baby, received over half his primary campaign war chest from a political action committee funded by Christian nationalist oil magnate Tim Dunn and historically by hard-right oil baron Farris Wilks.
French has run perhaps the most far-right campaign of any major Texas GOP candidate in recent memory: He’s called for the denaturalization and deportation of 100 million Americans (about a third of the country), including all Muslims, in violation of constitutional protections safeguarding religious freedom. He’s specifically taken aim at two sitting state legislators, calling for state Representatives Salman Bhojani and Gene Wu to be denaturalized and deported. Moreover, French remains one of the state’s most vocal proponents of the racist “great replacement theory,” which purports a conspiratorial effort by liberals or a secretive cabal to replace the descendants of white settlers with immigrants. He has also centered his campaign platform on deregulating one of the state’s already most industry-captured agencies and ending whatever might be left of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
French now faces state Representative Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat who, in addition to his eight years in the Texas House, has over two decades of direct operational experience in the oil and gas industry, including working as both a drilling rig equipment engineer and a subsea technology systems engineer. The Observer spoke with Rosenthal in July about his pro-regulatory approach, his opponent’s far-right rhetoric and deregulatory agenda, and the importance of local control.
TO: Bo French has run a far-right campaign that is an outlier in the Texas GOP, which is really saying something. He has run on overtly fascistic rhetoric, calling for the deportation of all Muslims and at least two state representatives. Can you talk about the dangers of empowering this kind of rhetoric?
First, those issues have nothing to do with cleaning up our environment, protecting our communities from higher prices and scarce water, making our electric grid more reliable, or even keeping Texas the energy leader of not just the United States but the energy production leader in the entire world. So I think that’s what the Railroad Commission should be about, making sure that Texas energy continues to lead the planet so we can be both profitable and responsible to our communities.
So if someone is operating a campaign talking about deporting 100 million people, incidentally more than half of those would be natural-born American citizens. He talked about deporting Native Americans. Where? I’m not sure, but off of their own land that they started on. He talks about the “Islamic invasion of Texas,” which, if it was a problem—and again, it’s not a thing—he’s running for the wrong office. I don’t know how you hold back a so-called “Islamic invasion” by regulating pipelines. I would sum it up by saying that I’m running a campaign to improve the Railroad Commission of Texas and to have it work better for the people that we serve, the people of this state. His campaign seems to be about alarmist rhetoric.
More specifically, he’s pledged more deregulation and also to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the commission. Could you talk about how those moves would affect the agency’s operations?
I think most of the people I talk to think it’s a sound position to simply enforce the regulations we have. Most people believe the Republican-controlled Legislature over the past 30 years has only implemented sensible regulations for oil and gas in Texas, and so implementing the regulations we already have, most people think is good sense. If you go to Corpus Christi, they’re worried about water. If you go to West Texas, they’re worried about pollution spilling up from under the ground and destroying the First Baptist Church in Grand Falls. Those folks don’t think we have too much regulation. They want to see us address our problems with pollution.
Now, as far as DEI practices at the Railroad Commission of Texas, again, this commission has been run by Republicans for 30 years, so if someone believes that there’s a problem with that … I don’t know what to tell them.
You’ve made weatherization of oil and gas infrastructure and curbing flaring among the key centerpieces of your campaign. What would you do as commissioner to enact your weatherization priorities and change the way the RRC is rubber-stamping flaring rule exceptions?
In both cases, I think the smart way to go about this is to partner with industry.
So, we want to talk about weatherization. The first thing to do is to work with the industry on the critical infrastructure. … If I’m the government and I say, “I command thou shalt do this, that, and the other thing,” and then the industry does those items, and then you have your next winter freeze and you have the same problem, industry can say, “Well, I did what you told me to do, and your stuff didn’t work.” But if you work together on developing workable solutions that industry could commit to, then not only do you have a better chance of it succeeding, but you also have an accountability piece that you can push.
About flaring, people should understand that we’re flaring, like, $1.9 billion worth of natural gas a year, and just burning that valuable resource into the air. It’s my idea to help the smaller producers with the cost of the infrastructure to capture natural gas and move it to market, and then the proceeds from selling that product pays for the infrastructure. The producer gets a piece and the commission gets a piece, and less energy resources are wasted. That’s the type of solution that you can advocate for if you actually know what you’re doing.
Other key issues for the RRC include plugging orphaned wells and more strongly addressing previously plugged so-called zombie wells. How would you address those issues?
If I’m one of the first Democrats elected [statewide] after a whole generation, and I have experience in government, you better believe I will be the most effective lobbyist for the Railroad Commission in Texas legislative history.
Even appropriating an extra $100 million in the previous cycle didn’t really help to ramp up the well plugging, so … the first piece is to increase the agency’s budget, lobby the Legislature to do that, and hopefully, we can get the other commissioners to advocate for this commission like I will. Then, the second part is, other states have more-effective surety bond programs, so if you’re a new operator or an egregious violator, then you should have to post a bond, which is enough to cover [expenses] if you abandon after producing. Because these corporations will drill a hole in the ground, bring the product up, and after the production starts waning, they just dissolve the corporation to evade responsibility and they disappear, and that leaves an orphaned well. So, for the people that don’t have responsible history, we ought to have higher surety bonds.
Bo French (Courtesy/campaign; illustration by Texas Observer)
One of the biggest issues for Texans who live adjacent to oil and gas operations is the issue of local control. After the city of Denton voted to ban fracking in 2014, the Legislature passed a bill that stripped regulatory control over oil and gas operations from municipalities and handed that power exclusively to the RRC. Even though you wouldn’t be able to reverse that decision as a commissioner, would you support returning local regulatory authority?
I’ve always been an advocate for local control. I think that if folks want to do business in our state and want to be good neighbors, community partners, and stewards of our economy and environment, they should be working with our municipalities. I think this sort of conversation comes up for me when we talk about data centers, too.
Back in the day, local control was a Republican priority, and I agreed with it then, and I agree with it now. So, no matter who is bringing industry into an area—whether that’s oil and gas or data centers or anything else—there should be an element of local control.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The post Who Stands Between Texas and a Fascist Railroad Commission? appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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