The West Texas Rancher Exposing Big Oil’s Buried Secrets
After an abandoned well began spewing toxic, salty water onto her Permian Basin land, Ashley Watt would stop at nothing to determine the cause—and to hold Chevron accountable.
Senior editor Russell Gold was born somewhere east of the Sabine River, but has lived in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio since 1996. He has spent most of that time writing about energy in its many forms. He has dodged polar bears on Alaska’s North Slope, climbed a wind turbine in Oklahoma, and spent time on frac pads from Carrizo Springs to Fort Worth and Odessa to Carthage. He worked at the San Antonio Express-News before joining the Wall Street Journal, where he worked from 2000 to 2021. Gold has won multiple business-writing awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the electric line–caused Camp Fire in California. His 2014 book, The Boom, was long-listed for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year prize. His 2019 book, Superpower, wasn’t—but it is even better. It profiles Houstonian Michael Skelly’s attempt to build a very, very long extension cord. Gold joined Texas Monthly in 2021 to write about the business of Texas. He lives with his wife in Austin.
After an abandoned well began spewing toxic, salty water onto her Permian Basin land, Ashley Watt would stop at nothing to determine the cause—and to hold Chevron accountable.
By Russell Gold
Our state struggles to serve Texans’ needs on the hottest and coldest days. So why are we welcoming the energy-hogging cryptocurrency industry?
By Russell Gold
The campaign for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, usually a low-profile affair, is getting more attention—and that’s a good thing.
By Russell Gold
An energy crisis on the Continent has it desperate for help from the Permian natural gas it had earlier spurned.
By Russell Gold
Turns out the Permian Basin well that's been blowing briny water 100 feet high isn't the well the Railroad Commission thought it was.
By Russell Gold
One year after the deadly blackout, Texas officials have done little to prevent the next one—which could be far worse.
By Russell Gold
Months after the company responsible missed a key deadline, the state environmental agency has yet to take further action to help Sweetwater officials get rid of two industrial dumps.
By Russell Gold
Assuming you own a pipeline, that is. The region is wrestling with a glut of the fuel.
By Russell Gold
The think tank convinced the state comptroller that it should be exempt from paying taxes on its lavish headquarters because it conducts “scholarly scientific research.”
By Forrest Wilder and Russell Gold
There are more places than ever to enjoy the naturally warm springs of Texas.
By Russell Gold
Glenn Rogers ran afoul of Governor Greg Abbott and billionaire oilmen Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. It cost him his job.
By Russell Gold
The Texas Blockchain Council aims to stop a new federal requirement that its members disclose how much electricity they’re pulling from the grid.
By Russell Gold
Transactions like this week’s $26 billion Diamondback-Endeavor deal signal a changing of the guard.
By Russell Gold
The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman and lay preacher is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.
By Russell Gold
Claude Cooke loved the oil and gas business—and worked to address some of its shortcomings.
By Russell Gold
Eddie Velez's father went to prison for selling marijuana when Velez was a child. Now, Velez sells legal cannabis for hemp and CBD products.
As told to Russell Gold
If Occidental Petroleum acquires CrownRock, the right-wing Midland oilman could become an even bigger power broker—in Texas and perhaps nationally.
By Russell Gold
In 1999 lawmakers radically altered the electricity marketplace. We can all breathe easier—literally—because of it.
By Russell Gold
As the attorney general’s impeachment trial takes place, a shadowy group has mobilized an army of political influencers to support his acquittal. Our ethics laws aren’t keeping up.
By Russell Gold
Defunct companies have left behind energy facilities that leak toxins into fragile coastal ecosystems. And guess who has to clean them up?
By Russell Gold
Brad Parscale is all in on artificial intelligence, and the right-wing billionaire Tim Dunn is now his biggest benefactor.
By Russell Gold
Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.
By Russell Gold
An oil executive wants to block the South Llano River for private recreational purposes. Hill Country residents are outraged.
By Russell Gold
Why Texas is the past, present, and future when it comes to fueling the world.
By Russell Gold
Many millennial and Gen Z workers have turned away from careers in fossil fuels—making Midland-based Permian Resources an anomaly.
By Russell Gold
Thank goodness the state GOP's war on renewables has, so far, failed.
By Russell Gold
Remembering John Goodenough, who was well into his fifties when he developed a battery that changed the world.
By Russell Gold
Depositions in a recent lawsuit reveal that state rep Tom Craddick, his wife and son, and his daughter, Christi, who leads Texas’s oil and gas regulating agency, profit from industry deals not available to just anyone.
By Russell Gold
What’s behind the Legislature’s relentless campaign against wind and solar power, which are saving Texans billions?
By Russell Gold
Former House Speaker Tom Craddick and his family—including his daughter, Railroad Commission chairman Christi Craddick—earned about $10 million last year from oil and gas rights.
By Russell Gold
It took him a while to get here, but now he’s out to transform our state with new technologies—if our leaders’ hostility toward renewable energy (and his Twitter misadventures) don’t get in the way.
By Russell Gold
Let’s crunch the numbers on what it would cost to avoid another “oakpocalypse.”
By Russell Gold
The names have changed over the decades, but through it all, Texas remains a place where money gets made—and spent.
By Tom Foster, Russell Gold, Jason Heid, Mimi Swartz and Texas Monthly
They washed the crude off their hands and put on suits and ties. Or sensible blazer-and-skirt combos.
By Russell Gold
The state avoided a disaster during the recent Arctic blast, but a sizable number of electricity generators still struggled in the cold.
By Russell Gold
When Bruno went missing, Alex Reyna lost a key member of his oil-field crew.
By Russell Gold
What should we do with our $27 billion windfall? We asked a variety of Texans for their brightest ideas.
By Russell Gold
Peter Brodsky could have retired on the wealth he built taking over billion-dollar companies. So why has he bet millions on a shopping center in southern Dallas?
By Russell Gold
On a farm near Flatonia, Mike Shellman closes the chapter on nearly sixty years in the business.
By Russell Gold
The lieutenant governor said the company was “discriminating against the oil and gas industry." He didn’t mention his own holdings in the firm.
By Russell Gold and Dan Solomon
On a state advisory committee, only one member has experience developing wind or solar power. And he’s voiced some eyebrow-raising ideas.
By Russell Gold
The oil giant this week announced quarterly earnings that set an all-time record for any Texas business. That’s both good and bad news for the state.
By Russell Gold
Our state struggles to serve Texans’ needs on the hottest and coldest days. So why are we welcoming the energy-hogging cryptocurrency industry?
By Russell Gold
Patching it cost the state $1.6 million. Many others are similarly falling into disrepair, and the agencies charged with their oversight are doing nothing about them.
By Russell Gold
After an abandoned well began spewing toxic, salty water onto her Permian Basin land, Ashley Watt would stop at nothing to determine the cause—and to hold Chevron accountable.
By Russell Gold
Bobby Sakowitz dressed Houston’s most stylish through the seventies and eighties boom years. Then things went bust.
By Russell Gold
Joe Nocera’s pitched profile of then-little-known T. Boone Pickens got him unprecedented access to Pickens’s 1982 attempt to take over Cities Service.
By Russell Gold
As TCEQ investigates its Austin plant, the company was praised for “protecting our state’s natural resources.”
By Russell Gold
That is, whenever the industry can sort out supply-chain issues and labor shortages.
By Russell Gold
Dangerous gas leaking from an abandoned well has become an issue in the colorful Railroad Commission runoff election.
By Russell Gold
Former staff writer Nicholas Lemann remembers how Exxon refused to cooperate with his story—and why that made all the difference.
By Russell Gold
Russia’s war on Ukraine has made it practically patriotic to pump oil, but the Permian hasn’t ramped up production. Don’t blame Washington. Blame Wall Street.
By Russell Gold
After Putin met Tillerson, billions were made, but at what cost?
By Russell Gold
The campaign for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, usually a low-profile affair, is getting more attention—and that’s a good thing.
By Russell Gold
An energy crisis on the Continent has it desperate for help from the Permian natural gas it had earlier spurned.
By Russell Gold
State leaders did little to prevent future blackouts, but ERCOT should have the electric supply to meet skyrocketing demand this week—so long as there are no major system failures.
By Russell Gold