Matlock faces an uphill battle against Craddick
James Matlock is no politician. He’s a former Marine who’s never run for office before. You won’t find him palling around with lobbyists and lawmakers in the halls of the state Capitol.
Yet for nearly 20 years as an independent consultant for oil and gas companies, Matlock, 51, has observed the Texas Railroad Commission’s apathetic approach to regulation. While the state agency is ostensibly supposed to be a watchdog over the oil and gas industry, Matlock said it instead repeatedly allows producers to cause earthquakes by injecting fracking wastewater into the ground and flare toxic pollutants into the air without regard for the environment or public health. Ultimately, he decided to do something about it, launching a long shot primary campaign against Christi Craddick, the incumbent Republican who currently chairs the commission.
Matlock is no tree hugger. He’s not calling for shutting down any oil and gas production or instituting a plethora of new rules that would cut into producers’ bottom line. He’s most concerned with what has become a common practice among oil and gas drillers who inject briny, contaminated wastewater that they pull up from fracking deep into porous rock formations underground, which researchers have linked to earthquakes. Rather than continue the commission’s practice of temporarily shutting down drilling in areas that have temblors, Matlock said, if elected, he would focus on responsible water management. He would push the Railroad Commission to invest in facilities and pipelines that recycle the produced water used for drilling.
“There’s technology available that would recycle the water to be used for irrigation purposes,” Matlock told us. “It would help farmers with food production, textile production such as cotton and help eliminate the quakes in West Texas.”
Though we’re not yet convinced such irrigation is safe, we’re encouraged by his search for solutions. Matlock is also concerned with the amount of flaring permits the commission issues, allowing oil and gas producers to spew toxic pollutants such as methane into the air. Matlock said flaring should be rare and that the commission will need to hire far more inspectors than it currently has to ensure producers are complying with the Biden administration’s rule to limit methane emissions, which the agency will be tasked with enforcing.
These ideas strike us as commonsense, low-hanging fruit solutions and a stark contrast to Craddick’s hands-off approach to an industry which has made her fabulously wealthy.
Craddick, 53, and her family own mineral rights and stock in oil and gas companies her agency is supposed to regulate and she’s accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the industry. We have little faith that she would work to implement critical federal pollution regulations, such as the new methane rule, which she has referred to as a government overreach and “unrealistic”. Worse, after the deadly 2021 Winter
Storm Uri, Craddick testified before Congress that frozen natural gas pipelines weren’t to blame for millions of power outages, despite federal regulators concluding the opposite. We called on her to resign for misleading the public. She did not respond to our request to meet with her.
Craddick has drawn several other challengers in this race.
Christie Clark, 48, is a civil attorney licensed in Louisiana who moved to Houston three years ago. Clark and Matlock share similar concerns about curbing groundwater contamination and stopping earthquakes, but she lacks Matlock’s experience and knowledge of the industry. Two other challengers, Petra Reyes and Corey Howell, did not respond to our interview requests.
As reasonable as Matlock seemed to be about relevant policy, we were concerned to learn he’d signed on to the “Texas First” pledge, which supports the possibility of seceding from the U.S.
Matlock said he would only support secession under “extreme” circumstances, and that his pledge was primarily in the interest of backing policies that put the people of Texas first, such as ensuring that the state has a secure, sustainable supply of food, water and energy.
We hope he keeps his focus there.
Matlock will face an uphill battle in a campaign against a well-financed incumbent but he has the experience to do the job. He’s our pick in the primary.