by John Robert BEHRMAN
Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, notes that the “natural gas revolution is by far the most significant energy development in decades.” I would add that the second-most important is development of a few deep, large fields by a few large, multinational firms, like Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP but, also, by state-owned firms outside remnants of the old the Anglo-American cartel. None of these developments is providing or will ever provide “energy independence” or “cheap gasoline”. But, they are surely good for the Houston economy.
Moreover, these latest are more developments of petroleum engineering than exploration since shale gas was known and large offshore “blocks” were surveyed and leased long ago. What we have is testament to both private and public investment over a huge range of technologies for a very long time, everything from digital signal processing to low earth-orbit global communication and sensors.
But, editors of the Houston Chronicle seem to think that such progress is “despite the efforts of the Obama administration to minimize … discovery of abundant oil and natural gas resources domestically.” No, that is just lobbyists griping. They are jackals, not wildcatters.
Actually, Democrats – notably Bill White and Bill Clinton but, really, going back to late Bob Eckhart and Charlie Wilson – very consistently supported sustained development, in particular, of natural gas in Texas as an alternative to coal and, I would add now, to heavy, sour bitumen or “tar sands” as they are called. The Democrats I stand with have been fair to the big players but remained sweet on the small ones — independent oil and gas firms located in Texas, “Little Oil”, as we say.
Moreover, for a long time, Texas Democrats, notably “Major” Jubal Randolph Parten, applied conventions of admiralty and state laws of common carriage to mitigate both monopoly rent extraction (by large firms) and environmental depredation (by small firms). To my mind, that is the best thing Texas Democrats ever did besides, of course, patriotically supporting the victory of democracies over the course of the Great, World, and Cold Wars.
More recently, President Obama ended the “War for Oil” or … “Whatever” in Iraq – certainly the stupidest war Anglo-American financial interests ever ginned up since, … well, since doing pretty much the same thing in the same place during World War I.
Some of what Democrats are doing today involves sustained preferences for domestic oil exploration and development but also industrial policy. These favor petroleum-related technology development and exports as well as “green” technologies that will increasingly substitute for imported oil. What we can reasonably expect from all that is a worldwide industry centered here in Greater Houston and supported by our cosmopolitan and creative culture.
The main problem we have going forward are not with not “energy” but with “power”. It is a breakdown of traditional common carriage regulation of large monopolies, of small “fly-by-night” operators, and of scam artists great and small. This is the oldest story in the “oil patch” and nothing the GOP has proven interested in or capable of doing anything about.
On the contrary: Even as Voser was writing in the Chronicle, the Financial Times of London was reporting that another Bush-era complex financial bet by Energy Future Holdings was about to blow up and take down TXU. This is the way it goes in our deregulated power casino: As one of the original investors in this deal admitted that, “once the hedges roll off, it’s all over (since) the single thing we got wrong was gas prices, no one saw shale gas coming”.
That is the whole problem with an unregulated deal-culture of get-rich-quick financial scams where there used to be a Texas Railroad Commission. Under Democratic leadership, Texas had the science-based planning and regulatory authority that got and, until recently, kept Texas in a leading position in world markets where all capitalists and socialists, pirates and tyrants compete under admiralty laws enforced or not.
Actually, Texas Democrats’ long-term and President Obama’s short-term record on sustainable oil & gas development is outstanding. Another war in the Middle East or, for that matter, another rogue operation in the Gulf like Deepwater Horizon could mess it up. But, President Obama has provided exactly the kind of hope and change voters here were promised supported countywide in 2008. That is infuriating, no doubt, to ex-Democrats like Rick Perry. But, who needs him or his ilk? Not that many Republicans and no Democrats, for sure.
John Robert BEHRMAN is the Democratic State Executive Committeeman for Senate District 13 in Harris and Fort Bend Counties. He owns mineral interest in Texas and shares in U.S. and French petroleum-related enterprises
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