[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Austin’s Oldest Profession: Texas’ Top Lobby Clients & Those Who Service Them 2002 Edition II. Lobby Clients Energy & Natural Resources

Accounting for 17 percent of Texas’ total lobby spending in 2001, Energy & Natural Resources interests spent between $18 million and $36 million to take out 811 lobby contracts. This is equivalent to the industry taking out 4.5 lobby contracts for every Texas legislator.

Energy interests dominated this sector, led by such investor-owned utilities as Reliant Energy, TXU, American Electric Power and their trade group—the Association of Electric Companies of Texas. These interests fended off populist efforts to refund $5 billion to ratepayers in 2001. Lawmakers previously had let the utilities collect this money to cover the “stranded costs” of nuclear power plants, which were considered incapable of competing in a deregulated market. In fact, nuclear power did compete, thanks to the soaring costs of other fuels. But industry lobbyists rallied in 2001 to prevent any refund of these phantom costs to ratepayers.

Federal and state officials have accused Enron, TXU, Reliant American Electric Power and other power companies of profiting off energy market manipulation. Reliant and Dynegy in 2002 acknowledged artificially boosting their energy trading volumes. The Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) staff has recommended a $7 million fine against defunct Enron and is negotiating settlements with five other power companies.⁵

Other leading clients in this sector have a keen interest in keeping Texas’ pollution cops off the beat. DuPont, ExxonMobil and ALCOA all work to keep Texas No. 1 in toxic pollution. Runaway air pollution in Texas’ major cities has politicians studying ways to limit vehicle emissions. This creates lobby jobs at Environmental Systems, the nation’s top producer of auto emissions testing equipment. Finally, in 2001 Waste Control Specialists lost the latest round of its perennial battle to expand its low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas.
 

Top Energy & Natural Resources Clients

Lobby Client	Max Value  of Contracts	No. of  Contracts
Dupont	$1,995,000	26
Reliant Energy	$1,825,000	32
TXU	$1,635,000	54
Association of Electric Companies of TX	$1,290,000	25
ExxonMobil	$1,290,000	23
American Electric Power	$990,000	17
Enron Corp.	$945,000	16
ALCOA	$825,000	12
Waste Control Specialists	$720,000	17
Environmental Sys. Products Holdings, Inc.	$700,000	8

Special-Interest Pioneer

Texas energy companies began to benefit one year after their 1999 lobbying coup—an emergency oil and gas tax cut backed by then-Governor George Bush.  The No. 1 beneficiary of this tax cut (which was supposed to benefit small energy producers) was Pioneer Natural Resources, which got a $45 million tax break, according to a Dallas Morning News investigation.6 The next largest beneficiaries were Chevron, Texaco, Exxon and Unocal.  Pioneer owner Richard Rainwater was Bush’s partner in the Texas Rangers and other business deals and was a top donor to Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns. Pioneer paid Locke Liddell & Sapp lobbyist Gary Compton up to $200,000 in 2001, just as it did back in 1999.