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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Twenty years have passed since the notoriously corrupt energy-trading company collapsed. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that it wasn’t all bad for Texas.
With taxpayer money now committed to the project, alongside private pledges, the oil billionaire’s push to create a conservative think tank on the Austin campus nears the goal line.
