Texas vs. The Climate Kooks
The push to boycott oil and gas companies, including demands for financial institutions to defund Big Oil, continues to grow. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for Biden to declare a national climate emergency, invoke the defense production act to increase renewable energy, end fossil fuel subsidies and reinstate crude oil export ban, and strengthen clean air and water protections. In Texas, the energy capitol of the world, those demands aren’t going to fly.
Comptroller Glenn Hegar sent letters to 19 financial institutions this week questioning if they are violating a new state law, Senate Bill 13, that prohibits companies from divesting from fossil fuel companies. It is a no-boycotting bill. SB13 went into effect last September. It prohibits the State of Texas from contracting with or investing in “companies that divest from oil, natural gas and coal companies. The law defines divestment as refusing to do business with a fossil fuel company because that company does not commit to environmental standards higher than expected by federal and state law.” Financial institutions that succumb to pressure from the Green New Deal cult will be punished for their role in defunding the oil and gas industry. Hegar explained to the Texas Tribune that the financial institutions want to play both sides of the issue.
Firms that received a letter include U.S.-based companies, like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Company, and foreign companies like Jupiter Fund Management PLC and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings, Inc.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Man Group PLC declined to comment for this story. Other companies Hegar contacted — BlackRock, Inc.; NatWest Group PLC — did not respond to The Texas Tribune’s requests for comment.
“Our research thus far shows that some companies are telling us and other energy-producing states one thing, and then turning around and telling their liberal clients in other states another thing,” Hegar said in a press release Wednesday. “On one hand, they push net-zero and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies and use their influence and the dollars under their management to limit access to capital for Texas oil and gas firms. Then these same firms tell Texas and other energy states that they’re committed to the fossil fuel sector.”
Never let a crisis go to waste. That advice issued by the current Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, in his Clinton administration days, holds true today for the keep-it-in-the-ground extremists. The fact is, energy companies have been developing and using clean fuel technology for years. American oil and gas products are among the cleanest in the world.
The Texas Legislature passed SB13 which is now in effect. Hegar’s office is compiling a list of companies that boycott fossil fuel energy. Letters went out to the first nineteen companies on Wednesday and the list is expected to grow to one hundred companies. Hegar asks companies about its policies on environmental standards – are they stricter than state and federal requirements, and if so, how are they enforced? Hegar also asked companies for a list of mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that “limit or don’t allow investment in fossil fuels.”
The companies have 60 days to respond. If they fail to do so, they will be assumed to be in violation of SB 13. Boycotting fossil fuel companies will result in existing contracts with the State of Texas to be canceled, as well as Texas pension funds divesting from them.
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The climate kooks are out of touch with reality. Fossil fuel does more than power automobiles. It is also necessary to modern agriculture from fertilizer to fuel for machines that make it possible to provide food in abundance. It is necessary for getting food and other goods to market. The climate change gang would destroy the country to "save it."
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