Texas Oil, American Wars

The industry that profits from war and runs Texas politics.

After the orange man got elected, I said we were going to stick to Texas, and we still are, because if there’s one industry that is seeped in so much evil and so much corruption that it could reach both Texas and Venezuela, it’s the oil industry. I don’t know about you, but I’m really mad about this whole deal.

The orange one said on national TV that the “US will look to tap Venezuelan oil reserves.”

Those oil reserves don’t belong to the US or any American company, likely headquartered out of Houston. It belongs to the Venezuelan people.

You know, there is no evidence that Maduro sent members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to the US.

And reports indicate that zero percent (0%) of the fentanyl entering the United States is sourced from or transits through Venezuela.

Trump claims he’s already met with the big three oil companies, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, but the lobbyists say no such meetings have taken place. You choose who you want to believe. The liar in chief. Or lobbyists.

• Exxon Mobil, headquartered in Spring, TX.

• ConocoPhillips, headquartered in Houston, TX.

• Chevron, headquartered in Houston, TX.

Did you know there were more clean energy jobs in Texas than fossil fuel jobs?

From the US Department of Energy’s 2023 Employment Report (USEER):

• 396,071 clean energy jobs.

• 284,952 fossil fuel jobs. Broken down by:

  • 181,334 in oil & other petroleum.

  • 100,972 in natural oil.

  • 2,646 in coal.

In 2024, Climate Power stated that over 250,000 Texans work in clean energy, more than in oil and gas.

E2’s Clean Jobs America notes that nationally, clean energy employment exceeds oil/gas/coal by more than 3-to-1.

While the numbers vary across sources, they all show that clean energy jobs outnumber fossil fuel jobs in Texas.

Why does this matter?

Because in Texas, it’s still so controversial to say, “Fuck fossil fuels.”

And I get it, some of us have worked in that industry, or have had family or friends in the industry. Some of us perhaps have had very lucrative careers centered around oil. And after all, that’s what the Republicans are so scared of. That the Democratic Party will take control and decimate the oil industry.

In 2019, Democrats held an oversight hearing, led by Jamie Raskin, and they found that fossil fuel companies knew about the devistating effects of climate change as far back as 1959. Here is Raskin testifying about that hearing at a later Senate hearing:

Raskin is the first person I’ve really heard talk about suing the oil industry, the way we once sued big tobacco, for the damage they’ve caused to this state, to this country, and to this planet.

Over the last few years, I’ve wondered, back then, when all of those big tobacco lawsuits were destroying a once-giant industry, did the Conservatives in tobacco states cry out, “But think of the poor tobacco workers.” I was too young, I don’t remember.

Maybe they did.

But big tobacco killed a lot of people…

Fossil fuel air pollution is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide yearly. Research from Harvard University found that more than 8 million people die each year from fossil fuel pollution as a result of breathing in air containing particles from burning fuels like coal, petrol, and diesel, which aggravate respiratory conditions like asthma and can lead to lung cancer, coronary heart disease, strokes, and early death.

On top of that, an estimated 400,000 people die each year due to hunger and diseases related to climate change. By 2030, the death toll is expected to rise to 700,000 per year and cost the global economy 2.5% of GDP annually.

The Houston area has some of the worst cancer clusters in the nation. And those cancer clusters lie primarily in Black and brown neighborhoods, killing people of color at higher rates and much quicker than in white Harris County neighborhoods.

But what does that have to do with Texas?

America has emitted the most carbon dioxide (CO2) in history, accounting for 20.3% of the global total since 1850. Although the United States no longer leads the world in total annual CO2 emissions, as of 2021, it released about 5 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, accounting for about 13.49% of global emissions, more than twice that of all 28 countries in the European Union combined.

Texas is the largest contributor to climate change in the United States. In 2019, it emitted 683.2 million metric tons, nearly twice as much as second-place California. If Texas were a nation, it would rank as the eighth-largest emitter in the world.

In America, we bear the brunt of the responsibility for climate change. In Texas, even more.

Unironically, Texas is also the state most vulnerable to climate change.

And Trump has tapped Texas companies to lead the way in stealing Venezuela’s oil.

What’s happening with Venezuela feels shocking only if you don’t know the history. It’s the same oil playbook the United States has been running for decades, with Texas companies never far from the action.

Start with Iran, 1953. When Iran moved to nationalize its oil and cut British and American companies out of the profits, the US helped overthrow its democratically elected government. The result was decades of dictatorship and repression, all to keep oil flowing on Western terms.

In 1991, the Gulf War was framed as defending sovereignty and international order, but it centered on who controlled oil in the Persian Gulf. In 2003, the story shifted to weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. American companies positioned themselves for access while the country lay in ruins.

Then there’s Libya. NATO intervention was sold as a humanitarian mission. What followed was regime change, chaos, and a power vacuum in yet another oil-rich state.

In Nigeria, oil companies extracted massive wealth while communities in the Niger Delta lived with poisoned water, burned farmland, and militarized repression. But the oil kept flowing.

And now, Venezuela. Once again, a country with vast oil reserves tries to control its own resources. Once again, the language is crime, gangs, instability, and corruption. Once again, sanctions strangle the economy while US politicians openly talk about tapping another nation’s oil as if it’s theirs for the taking.

Whenever a country has oil and tries to use it for its own people instead of foreign corporations, US oil interests don’t argue about sovereignty. And hovering in the background, again and again, are companies headquartered right here in Texas.

But if oil is no longer our biggest employer, why are we still sacrificing Texans for it?

Clean energy already employs more Texans than fossil fuels. And yet oil still gets treated like a sacred cow, immune to criticism, accountability, and the consequences it leaves behind.

Oil kills Texans. Oil poisons Texans. Oil destabilizes the world.

So why does it still run our politics?

Why are Texas schools underfunded while oil companies enjoy BILLIONS in tax breaks and severance tax incentives?

Why is ERCOT fragile and unreliable, leaving people to freeze to death or bake in the heat, while Texas politicians bend over backward to protect fossil fuel profits instead of building a resilient grid?

Why do we tolerate cancer clusters in Houston, Port Arthur, and along the Gulf Coast, almost always in Black and brown neighborhoods, as the “cost of doing business”?

Why are oil and gas subsidies still flowing, propping up aging, low-producing wells, when the free market would otherwise let them die?

It isn’t about jobs. And it sure as hell isn’t about protecting working Texans.

It’s about power.

Texas oil culture isn’t a tradition. It’s political malpractice. It’s a governing class so captured by one industry that it keeps choosing pollution over people, profits over public health, and corporate loyalty over the future of this state.

Texas Republicans pretend oil is untouchable because they’re protecting the industry that owns them.

Oil in Texas is a political class.

Republican Supervillain Tim Dunn, where did he get his billions to buy out Texas Republicans? Fossil fuels. How did Kelcey Warren, the billionaire who profited from Winter Storm Uri, strike it big? Oil. And countless other big-money donors who fill the coffers of the political class in Texas, and have for over a century.

Oil companies aren’t just pulling fuel out of the ground. They shape foreign policy. They influence wars. They warp public health outcomes. They distort democracy itself.

Oil executives sit at the table where sanctions are written, where military “interests” are defined, where entire regions of the world are labeled unstable or dangerous.

They are war profiteers. Conflict drives oil prices. Instability creates leverage. Reconstruction creates contracts. From the Persian Gulf to Venezuela, oil companies benefit when nations are destabilized and resources are pried loose.

They are public health threats. Refineries, pipelines, and petrochemical plants poison air and water, concentrate cancer in working-class communities, and externalize the cost onto people who never consented to being collateral damage.

And they are democracy distorters. Through campaign donations, lobbying, regulatory capture, and revolving-door appointments, oil companies write the rules they’re supposedly regulated by.

That’s why it matters where these companies are headquartered.

Texas exports oil power.

And that power doesn’t stop at the state line. It reaches into Washington, into foreign governments, into military strategy, and into the lives of people who will never see a dollar of the wealth extracted in their name.

Once you understand oil as a political class, maybe the rest of it makes more sense. The wars. The lies. The subsidies. The unwillingness to let go, even when the industry is no longer the backbone of our economy.

There’s a lot of that we can fix if we can flip Texas blue.

And we know the data, we know the statistics about what fossil fuels have done to our state. It shouldn’t be radical to say, “Texas doesn’t owe oil its loyalty.”

It shouldn’t be radical to say, “No more wars for oil.”

And it shouldn’t be radical to say, “No more oil money running Texas from the shadows.”

Clean energy already employs more Texans. Oil already poisons more Texans. And yet we’re still asked to sacrifice our lives, our democracy, and our moral credibility to protect an industry that refuses to let go of power.

I ALWAYS remain hopeful Democrats will flip the Legislature. As I’ve told you many times before, we have the numbers. We always have. It’s just a matter of getting people to the polls.

If they do flip the Legislature next in November, I’ll have my Legislative priority list. The immediate fossil fuel-related bills I would add to it are:

1. Repeal severance tax exemptions and “incentives” that prop up low-producing and inactive wells.

2. Prohibit campaign donations from oil and gas corporations and their PACs.

3. Give TCEQ teeth. End routine flaring exemptions. Treat illegal emissions like crimes.

4. Put state dollars into clean energy manufacturing, grid modernization, and workforce transition programs.

5. Redirect pollution fines, flaring penalties, and enforcement fees straight into public schools, weatherization, and grid hardening.

Texas doesn’t need oil to survive. Oil needs Texas Republicans to stay in power.

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