Shining a Light on Oil and Gas Regulators

This story was originally published in the Hive Fund’s triennial report.

Virginia Palacios’ fourth-generation family ranch sits atop the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, a hydro-carbon rich geologic formation estimated to hold over 20 trillion cubic feet of fossil gas. Production in the region took off in the 2010s, releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere and fueling a boom in liquified natural gas (LNG) exports that is undermining global climate progress. Extraction is also polluting the air and water in the largely Hispanic/Latinx communities that lived here long before fossil fuels were discovered.

Virginia Palacios (center) with Commission Shift directors Maria Reyes (right) and Tannya Benavides. Photo by Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon

“There was a study in 2020 showing that Hispanic women living in the Eagle Ford Shale who live next to high rates of flaring [burning off excess gases] have 50 percent higher odds of pre-term birth,” said Palacios. “That study really hit home. As a woman in her thirties, it’s hard to think of how my family can continue to live out here for future generations.”

Palacios is a ninth generation Tejana who, after years working with a national environmental organization, has turned her eye to a little-known but extremely powerful agency misleadingly named the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC). The agency, whose three current commissioners have either denied that climate change is human caused or have decried federal interventions to address it, is responsible for monitoring and enforcing the oil and gas industry’s compliance with environmental and safety regulations.

“The Railroad Commission of Texas is the most important climate agency possibly in the world that too many people don't know about,” said Palacios. “It’s extremely important that we focus on the state agency that regulates oil and gas development in the state that produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other state.”

“The Railroad Commission of Texas is the most important climate agency possibly in the world that too many people don’t know about”

Palacios started Commission Shift in 2021, hiring on two other Latina staff with roots in oil and gas country and deep civic activism experience, to bring public scrutiny to RRC and hold it accountable to its mission of stewarding natural resources and the environment. The organization is one of a growing number of groups representing impacted communities that are shining a light on powerful regulatory agencies that are captured by the industries they regulate.

Bringing on scrutiny

One of Commission Shift’s first projects was to expose commissioners’ conflicts of interest. “Captive Agency,” a report released in partnership with Texans for Public Justice, generated headlines across the state and prompted calls for reform and resignations. In its latest series of reports, Commission Shift highlights RRC’s failure to enforce regulations on owners of “orphan” wells—decommissioned wells that continue to release methane as well as toxic chemicals—winning the group support from more conservative local landowners frustrated by RRC’s inaction.

Commission Shift is also leveraging public anger following Winter Storm Uri, which exposed many of the agency’s failures, to get ordinary Texans more engaged. Through a partnership with Latinx civic engagement group Jolt, also a Hive Fund grantee, they got nearly a thousand people to submit comments in a rulemaking process around critical energy infrastructure, and their top recommendations were adopted.

“[It’s] not only those folks who are directly impacted by the well in their backyard,” explained Palacios, “but also everybody who has an [energy] bill in Texas, right? Because this agency really has a wide influence on everyone.”

The Hive Fund provided a multi-year grant to Commission Shift in 2022 to expand this kind of non-partisan civic engagement work in partnership with other groups around the state, getting more people to speak out and making sure voters—especially voters of color—understand what’s at stake when they go to the polls to elect commissioners. Commission Shift is also collaborating with environmental justice groups along the Gulf Coast that are targeting RRC in their fight to stop dangerous carbon capture use and storage projects.

Leveraging people power

Organizing around these disproportionately powerful regulatory agencies can be an effective way for smaller climate justice groups across the South to influence energy policy and regulation. For these somewhat obscure agencies unused to public scrutiny, community engagement can have a significant impact on the way they do their business, making it harder for them to let polluters slide.

In South Carolina, members of Hive Fund-supported Southeast Climate and Energy Network (SCEN) organized impacted constituents and policy advocates in a pressure campaign leading the Public Service Commission (the agency that regulates electricity providers) to reject Duke Energy’s plans to build out 50 new gas-fired power plants, which would have made it impossible for the utility to meet its own stated climate commitments. Groups in North Carolina also successfully organized to head off a legislative effort by Duke to weaken the state utility commission’s regulatory power and cut off public input processes.

In Georgia, grantees are working to ensure free and fair elections to their Public Service Commission, which has only had one Black commissioner in its history in a state whose population is 33 percent Black. They won a major legal victory this summer ending at-large voting for the commission on the basis that it intentionally diluted the Black vote.

For Palacios, these kinds of public engagement tactics are critical to addressing the climate crisis. “If we're going to hit the climate goals that we have from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by 2030, we have to really turn around the commission quickly,” she said. “Getting to 2030 and getting the kind of significant changes we need, I think democracy expansion is how we're going to get there.”