Jeff Weems, left, Democrat candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner answers questions from John Brown after talking to Young County Democrats.
Weems: Commission must change
by Gay Storms
(Posted 7/27/2010 04:18 pm)
lifestyles@grahamleader.com
Jeff Weems, Democratic candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, took aim at some hot campaign issues during his swing through Graham on July 21.
Weems, an oil and gas attorney from Houston, spoke to a receptive crowd gathered for the Young County Democratic Party luncheon at Casa Grande Grill. Weems is one of the Democrats with the best chance to win the November election, according to the Texas Tribune and Texas Monthly.
“I’m a hard worker and a fighter,” Weems said. He said his family has worked in the oil business for four generations, beginning with his grandfather and now his fourth son. Beginning in high school, he worked summers on rigs and as a drilling mud representative to get through college.
“Now I am an energy litigator, which gives me an opportunity to work with small operators, the biggest employers in the oil and gas industry,” Weems said.
Raised in Louisiana where he rubbed shoulders with oil field workers and operators alike, Weems has heard firsthand the after effects of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
“I have shrimper friends in that area. It’s a ghost town except for engineers,” he said. “What happened offshore is a failure of regulators.
We can never, never allow what happened offshore to happen onshore in Texas.”
The Railroad Commission’s job is to make sure this never occurs, but its past record has not been encouraging, he said. The railroad commissioners’ excuses and failures to make and enforce regulations have resulted in the Environmental Protection Agency stepping into the state’s energy problems, he said.
“The Texas Railroad Commission backs off so the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality steps in,” said Weems. “The TCEQ doesn’t get the job done so another agency steps in, then finally the EPA. Regulations need to be on a local level, but this is not happening. The Texas Railroad commissioners need to be back doing their business. Texans don’t want the federal government making regulations.”
The Railroad Commission needs to change its philosophy regarding how it looks out for the public interest, Weems said.
“My biggest disappointment in the railroad commission is that it hasn’t fought for workers,” he said. “Democrats fight for the workers.”
Weems’ campaign strategy is to get more feedback from independent operators and field operators in the oil and gas industry. Young County is the 144th county he has visited during his campaign.
“Of course, I can’t go to all the counties, said Weems. “I may skip some in the Panhandle — one that has a population of 44, two of those Democrats.”
His second appeal to current railroad commissioners is to stop cutting the budget.
“Cutting the budget means there will be less field operators and less money to pay inspectors,” he said.
He said he had been called to task by the Austin American Statesman for overestimating the number of wells one inspector was responsible for monitoring. But when the newspaper researched his claim, the Statesman admitted Weems had underestimated.
“The agency now has roughly one inspector for every 4,500 oil and gas wells in the state,” Weems said.
He said failure to regulate will produce disastrous results for the future. Commissioners must plan how to safeguard the state’s water resources so that future generations will have enough.
“For every ‘frac job,’ three millions of gallons of ground water are used. The result is salty, unusable water which goes into the ground and is gone forever,” he said. “Now the Texas Railroad Commission hits only the diamond formed by Houston, San Antonio, Midland and South Texas,” said Weems.
He hopes to reach the overlooked constituents, both oil workers and land owners.
“I want to meet oil field workers and small oil operators in the Barnett Shale, inspect equipment rusting away in East Texas and see what’s going on in the heartland of the Texas oil industry,” Weems said.
Calling himself a conservative environmentalist, Weems has represented enough clients trying to get compensation for oil and gas damages to know that land owners have not received enough support. He’s seen ruined grasslands, dead fish in contaminated creeks and water tanks, and the destruction has not always been compensated.
Weems is running against Republican David Porter, who won the March primary against incumbent Victor Carrillo.
That an unknown CPA from Giddings won the primary dumbfounded many Texans, he said.
“He shocked everyone because he didn’t raise money, he didn’t campaign, he got no endorsements from newspapers, and I only saw him once before the primary,” Weems said.
Likening Porter to a groundhog, Weems said, “Nobody’s seen him since the primary — he pops up, appears briefly and moves on.”
Weems has concluded that his opponent as “singularly unqualified.”
Porter has no direct connections with the oil and gas industry except for doing tax returns for oil people and sharing a tiny percentage in an oil well he helped finance, Weems said.
But the fact remains that Porter is a strong Republican contender.
“He (Porter) is powerful — he has lots of rich supporters in the oil and gas industry,” he said.
Weems knows he will have a hard battle to win against a candidate with such strong financial backing. But in a question and answer session following his speech, Weems remained hopeful. He said he has not seen the amount of Democratic candidates in a decade, covering the state and talking to workers — they like what they are hearing.
The amount and type of donations Weems has received indicate his campaign is headed in the right direction.
“I’d rather get a thousand $25 checks than one $125,000 check,” he said. “That means I have the support of workers.”
Weems hopes to visit almost every county before election day. (Photos by Gay Storms)
