THE WATER COOLER
As reported by the American-Statesman’s Asher Price, Victor Carrillo has departed from his role as chief executive of Zion Oil and Gas, a Dallas-based firm that looks to the Bible for clues about where to drill for oil in Israel. “Carrillo told the American-Statesman that it was ‘just time for me to move on,’ but his departure comes as the company is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,” Price wrote, “At least a decade into operations, the company has yet to strike a producing well.” Carrillo was once Texas’ top oil and gas regulator; he served as commissioner on the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, from 2003 to 2011. In 2016, he told the Statesman his job as Zion’s chief executive officer was to “bring the geology that informs the theology.”
Clara Sterling: There’s something hilarious to me about a “biblically oriented firm” that deals in fossil fuels derived from the super-compressed bodies of plants and animals that are hundreds of millions of years old.
Randy Rupley: Deuteronomy 32:13: “He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.”
Gayland Williams: A bunch of innocent people got fleeced by this con artist pretending to be holy. The fact that he held a job of some importance in the state is a great cause of concern.
Donovan Lewis: Wow! It gets funnier the more you read it. “Bring the geology that informs the theology.”