TX Rep. Myra Crownover is vice chair of the energy resources committee and she receives income from the oil & gas industry. I call that a conflict of interest and questionable ethics.
Top contributors from Ethics Explorer:
- Ronny Crownover Campaign: $39,281
- Texas Oil & Gas PAC: $14,000
- Texas Assn. of Realtors PAC: $11,768
- Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC: $10,021
- Koch PAC: $10,007
- Friends of UNT PAC: $9,000
- Texas Medical Association: $8,531
- Texans for Economic Development PAC: $8,500
- ConocoPhillips Spirit PAC: $8,500
- Valero PAC: $8,000
One of the bills she wrote this session, HB 878, has passed the House and Senate and is in the Governor’s office where he will sign it into law.
This bill allows operators to strike a deal with the Railroad Commission to keep their electronic logs of drilling operations confidential or secret for three years. The statute of limitations in Texas is two years.
There was recently a blowout in Denton which is Crownover’s district. This bill is clearly not in the best interest of her constituents.
P.S. If there is no problem with fracking, why the need for all the secrecy?
Update to address questions from industry.
When frackers call it casing it’s okay but when we call it casing it’s not. That means IOIYAF = It’s okay if you’re a fracker.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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Just another example of our crooked politicians at work with the RRC and TCEQ to do damage to the ordinary peasants who live on the land.
Oh, I forgot to include the oil soaked courts in Tx. It’s all rotten to the core.
Do not trust your gubment at any level.
Sources of Income fromTexas Tribune. Talk about conflict of interest!
But the dumbasses in Denton County will keep on electioning her because she is a Republican. How do they sleep at night? Oh yea, on a sack full of money.
Crownover is self-employed in the real estate and oil and gas fields. She is a managing partner at Crownover Inc., an oil and gas and banking business, which lists numerous rigs as assets.
She holds a business called MRC Master Limited Partnership, which also lists numerous rigs as assets and is oil and gas-related.
She holds some properties in the Dallas area through Crownover Commercial Properties.
She serves as a director for Northstar Bank and serves as treasurer for the Southern States Energy Board.
According to her financial disclosure form for 2011, Crownover owns stock in Johnson & Johnson, Nuance Communications, Pepsi Co., Northstar Bank, Crownover Inc., Automatic Data Processing and General Electric. She also has stock in Broadridge Financial Solutions through an IRA.
She receives income from interest, dividends, royalties and/or rent from Enterprise Crude LLC, Devon Energy, Apache Corporation, Lakeshore Animal Clinic, Victory Management and MRC Master LP.
She has interest in the following business entities: Northstar Bank, Robinson Drilling, Crownover Inc., MBR Investments, Energy Income Investments and MRC Master LP.
She owns 56 acres of mineral rights in Ponder.
All of which means she can spend whatever it takes to be a Texas State Senator. Our state is being run by the special interests! They definitely don’t work for the majority of us and that MUST change.
Sadly, we are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to compensating the people who make our laws. And that makes it so easy for them to ignore us.
Compensation
We need to make it possible for people to run for office with the best ability to truly represent their constituencies. We also deserve to have a year-round legislature that isn’t controlled by legislators who are only “serving” to enhance their own stock portfolios.
WCGasette recently posted..Energy Security from Shale Gas? Think Again…With Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
When industry runs your government its called fascism, when will the peasants wake up?
14 defining characteristics of fascism:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Electronic logs of drilling operations don’t have anything to do with fracking. If it were completion plans then it would be relevant, but from what I read there is nothing about completion plans.
The completion plans must be a part of the logs because we have seen several cases where the completion paperwork was held confidential by the RRC at the request of the operator. When the confidentiality agreement expired and the completion paperwork was released, it was discovered that a casing had ruptured and the operator was never able to fix it. In another case there was a problem cementing the well.
“Oil and gas may fuel our country” but the people have a right to know “The Honest Truth.”
No, they are not part of the logs. I would know since I have done them before and submitted them to the RRC. This makes your initial post completely invalid. Please please please let me know how you know an operator had RUPTURED casing and couldn’t fix it and just left it while still continuing operations. PLEASE. Or even just the well name and operator would work. In all my years working in oil and gas, I have never seen or heard of anyone ever continuing operations with ruptured casing. If you want to know why nobody would ever do that, well, just respond and I will let you know why.
As far as the honest truth, please go back and read my comments on your “signs” post and that is the honest truth. It’s the one where you said you are done replying, which a lot can be inferred from.
The Honest Truth commenter formerly known as Oil and Gas fuels our country.
You might need to slow down and read more carefully. Please, PLEASE show me where I said this:
and just left it while still continuing operations
They didn’t continue operations but they withheld the completion paperwork in confidentiality under Statewide Rule 16 that showed they had a ruptured casing.
I really don’t care which name I go by. I’m not trying to hide like you are insinuating.
So they didn’t continue operations, but they didn’t fix it? Because you did say the operator was never able to fix it. What you’re saying is that they left probably around a $3 million hole in the ground? I have never seen a company abandon a hole because of some bad casing, especially when there are easy ways to fix it. Something isn’t really adding up here.
Then use your real name.
Apparently they tried, they really tried to fix it. $3 Million Dollars may be loose change to the Big Boys, but to smaller operators like Expro Engineering aka Trinity East, it’s not. Hydraulically fracturing a horizontal well a mile below the earth’s surface must be hell if you have mega bucks…Mega HELL if you don’t.
You are so correct that something doesn’t add up here. But some things do add up very clearly. There is likely a lot more to it… All we know is what we can all attempt to access on the (still known as) Railroad Commission of Texas Web site ~ The Well “Completion” Paperwork. Only it’s really NOT complete.
This $3 Million Dollar Hole in the Ground is now part of a Consolidated Leasehold, tucked away from the viewing audience with all the other Lost Wells of the Barnett Shale. Did you know the well logs for onshore wells can be virtually “lost” for up to 5 years? ~ held in secrecy by the operators under Confidentiality.
Senator Crownover’s Bill ~ HB 878 will apparently amend the Confidentiality Rule and not allow for an extension beyond the original 3 years for onshore and 5 years for offshore wells. That’s about all it will do.
Here’s the “Completion Paperwork” for one confused well. It’s the story of the casing failure. It’s been uploaded to Scribd as it appears on the RRC Web site:
Completion Paperwork ~ API #113-30189 ~ Trinity East ~ The Dallas Lease (The Bad Well)
Here’s the “Paperwork” for the well that appears to be “Completion Paperwork” even though it isn’t located under any Completion queries on the RRC Web site. It shows to be “Potential.” Potential sounds like maybe they are looking to raise some dollars. Don’t know. You may see blank pages. This is the way the doc appears on the RRC Web site:
Probably Completion Paperwork But Not Found Under Completion Queries ~ API #113-30147 ~ The University of Dallas/City of Dallas Lease’s Well (The Good Well)
Good Night and Good Luck.
WCGasette recently posted..Energy Security from Shale Gas? Think Again…With Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
Thank you for providing the link to that paperwork. I think our detractors have clocked out for the weekend. We never clock out. We live here.
Oops. Just to correct what was written…wells in the Barnett Shale field are typically being fracked horizontally at a depth between 9,000 and 12,000 feet below the earth’s surface. That’s way over 1 mile. This failed well was drilled down to a depth of 9,500 ft according to the Drilling Permit.
API #113-30189 Drilling Permit
WCGasette recently posted..Energy Security from Shale Gas? Think Again…With Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
Also, let me help you with your terminology a little just to bring you up to speed because it really does make things easier when discussing these matters. ‘A casing’ should be referred to as a casing joint or strand. when talking about cementing a well, there a few different things that could mean. You are either cementing the casing or you are putting cement in the wellbore as a type of pill/plug to reduce lost circulation. They are very different. I have never seen a problem with using cement as a pill/plug, but if there is a problem with cementing casing it is one of the easiest to fix and doesn’t have a long term affect on the wellbore since the casing must be tested and approved by state/national government officials (depending on what land you’re on) before drilling starts again on the next section, so they cement casing until they get it right. I’ve rarely seen casing fail pressure tests, but when it has, they circulated it through and pumped new cement that easily met pressure requirements. Just a little good info for my readers out there.
Thanks so much with your instruction but as you can see from the image in the updated post, the operator said the casing parted.
PS: You don’t have readers. I do.
Have you seen the version of this bill from 2009? It has a lot more detail and explanation of the terms used. Looks as if that detail hasn’t made it into this 2013 version.
2009 Version of the 2013 HB 878
What’s the difference between a cased hole log and an electric log? (see bottom of page 1 to top of page 2 of HB 878: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Actions.aspx?LegSess=83R&Bill=HB878 ).
It appears that an operator will not have to run an electric log if a cased hole log is run (after September 1, 2013). Was a cased hole log ever run before? And why are all these well logs in the Barnett Shale currently being kept under wraps with 2 year Confidentiality Extensions beyond the 1st Year?
So, will we all be safer if HB 878 becomes law?? Truly, what’s in this bill for those who live near these operations? It looks as if it wants us to see it as something better and more transparent than what currently exists.
What is this bill really about?
Maybe Governor Rick Perry can explain it before he signs the bill!
WCGasette recently posted..Energy Security from Shale Gas? Think Again…With Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
Oops!!
WCGasette recently posted..Energy Security from Shale Gas? Think Again…With Dr. Anthony Ingraffea
The difference between the two bills is amazing. Did you notice the difference in the fines?
This whole state is captured by the oil & gas industry.