Texas Energy Report NewsClips
Tuesday February 10, 2026
Asterisk (*) denotes news stories that may be inaccessible because portions are behind a paywall
Good morning! Here are today’s Texas Energy Report NewsClips
Top Stories
Reuters – February 9, 2026
Shell needs big discovery or deals as oil, gas reserves dwindle*
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February 9, 2026
We recommend in the Republican primary for Railroad Commissioner: Dallas Morning News*
Related: Texas Railroad Commission primary: Who is running and what to know — Texas Tribune
For too long, the Texas Railroad Commission has been criticized for essentially being in the hands of the oil and gas industry it is supposed to regulate. There are well-documented examples that reveal that the state agency basically operates a rubber-stamp system. This is why it was refreshing that three of the candidates in the Republican primary for Railroad Commissioner were concerned about conflicts of interest at the agency and the need to rebuild trust. From this group, we recommend Katherine Culbert, a process safety engineer, as having the best credentials for this agency and for her commitment to transparency.
Culbert, 50, told us she likes to look at things with a preventive eye to make sure workers and communities are protected. Orphan wells are an example of how the agency is not doing enough, she said. “When a plugged well leaks, the Commission needs to take responsibility for the well, no matter the history,” she wrote in the Voter Guide. “It does not benefit Texans to have the Railroad Commission turning away from helping landowners because of an old well that is not on the books.”
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pv magazine – February 9, 2026
ERCOT BESS interconnection applications drop 50% in H2 2025 as faults in the boom emerge
Texas nearly doubled its battery fleet in 2025, with 6 GW of new capacity coming online to total 13.9 GW and 22.9 GWh of operational grid-scale BESS capacity in early 2026, according to data from market research firm Modo Energy’s ERCOT Annual Buildout Report. It’s a record. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ (ERCOT) interconnection process is fast, but that makes it fragile. According to Ovais Kashif, a US West research lead at Modo Energy, much of last year’s buildout reflects much older decision making.
“The record capacity delivered in 2025 came from projects financed three to five years ago, when battery revenues were much higher,” Kashif told ESS News. Now, the market remains more vulnerable to political shocks and the timeline after construction has remained the same for the past five years. As a result, he said, new interconnection applications in H2 fell 50% compared to H1, due to political hurdles like the loss of tax credits.
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Politico – February 9, 2026
Poll shows Democrats hold edge over Trump in energy cost battle*
Slightly more Americans think Democrats, not Republicans, are the party most committed to reducing energy prices, a new POLITICO poll has found — yet another sign of potential trouble for President Donald Trump and the GOP on the issue of affordability. Thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults believe Democrats care more about protecting them from spiking natural gas, heating and utility bills, compared with 25 percent who believe Republicans do, according to the poll of 2,093 people conducted by Public First on behalf of POLITICO.
While far short of a majority, the edge for Democrats on the question is striking given the decades that surges in fuel costs have tormented nearly every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter, giving Republicans a message to hammer at election time. As recently as late 2024, polls showed most voters trusting Trump over Kamala Harris to shepherd the economy. But those tides may be turning, amid signs that stubbornly high — and rising — heating and electricity costs in much of the country could endanger Republicans’ slim four-seat lead in the House in the November elections. Trump has tried to quash unrest over skyrocketing electricity bills, which have soared despite his vow to slash energy costs in half during his first year in office.
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The Latest TERse Tips
Constellation said Monday that Calpine LLC, a business unit of Constellation, signed a new 380-megawatt agreement with Dallas-based CyrusOne, a “leading global data center developer and operator,” to connect and serve a new data center adjacent to the Freestone Energy Center, in Freestone County — see the press release
With a potential for over $40 billion in spending over the next 10 – 15 years for new and upgraded transmission lines, Texans for Affordable Transmission has stepped forward to advocate for more affordable transmission infrastructure — see the press release
One Texas family is doing something unusual: raffling off 100-acres of their mineral rights for the price of a cup of coffee — KXAN
When Congress moved last week to slash federal funding for electric vehicle charging stations, the cuts fell hardest on red states — E&E News By Politico*
Cuba says international airlines can no longer refuel there as Trump turns up the pressure — CNBC
South Korea’s LG Energy Solution on Friday said it plans to buy the 49% stake held by Stellantis in their battery joint venture in Canada for the nominal amount of $100 (correct) — Reuters*
Oil & Gas Texas
E&E News By Politico – February 9, 2026
Longtime Exxon lawyers retreat from oil company’s climate cases
The law firm that has helped Exxon Mobil notch significant victories in its battle against climate lawsuits from local governments has pulled out of at least four of the court fights. Exxon and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison attorneys this month notified courts in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine and Washington state that the firm would no longer represent the oil giant as it fights efforts by governments and individuals in those states to hold the oil and gas industry financially accountable for climate change.
The filings did not elaborate on the reasons for the moves, but noted lawyers from other firms would remain as counsel. While rare, withdrawals from cases are not unheard of and can be made by either attorneys or clients for various reasons. Paul, Weiss attorneys continue to represent Exxon in a number of other climate cases, including a longstanding challenge from Massachusetts. The moves came at the same time as the chair of Paul, Weiss stepped down last week amid fallout over his email exchanges with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
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Houston Chronicle – February 9, 2026
Expand Energy to move headquarters to Houston as CEO steps down*
Expand Energy, the largest independent natural gas producer in the U.S., is moving its headquarters to Houston later this year. Formerly known as Chesapeake Energy, the $26 billion gas giant joins a growing list of oil and gas companies – including energy giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Devon Energy – moving to Houston to take advantage of the close proximity to LNG export terminals, fellow industry executives and global counterparts’ U.S. offices. The move to Houston is expected in mid-2026 and will primarily involve the leadership team, the company said Monday in a news release.
The relocation allows the company “to capitalize on Houston’s leading role as a gateway to the global natural gas market,” Expand’s Chairman Michael Wichterich said in a statement. “As North America’s largest natural gas producer, this will accelerate our strategy to provide affordable, reliable, lower carbon energy to growing domestic and global markets,” Wichterich said. Expand also announced Monday the company’s Chief Executive Domenic Dell’Osso would step down. No reason for Dell’Osso’s departure was given.
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Reuters – February 9, 2026
Chevron’s Tengiz oilfield back to 60% of usual output, two sources say*
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Texas Monthly – February 5, 2026
Oil Binds Venezuela’s Future to Texas. Will It Help My People Buy Our Freedom?*
Trump and his administration seem content, for now, to leave the dictatorship in place, only with Delcy Rodríguez at the top. She was Maduro’s cunning vice president and the engineer of a recent softening of Venezuela’s stance toward U.S. oil interests. She’s been working with Houston-based Chevron for a while, and last July she negotiated a license renewal with the Trump administration that allowed Chevron to resume producing and selling Venezuelan oil.
Rodríguez and others in the former Maduro regime are experts at buying time. Their game now is proving to Trump that the only way to retain order in Venezuela, the only way to start oil flowing again, is to keep them in charge. The regime controls the military; it controls the informal, weaponized gangs, called colectivos, that have served as the government’s intimidation arm; and it also controls the Mafias that have infiltrated all of Venezuela’s resource industries and run the black market resource economy.
For my other home, Texas, this situation is all upside. Because of our proximity to Venezuela through the Gulf and the Caribbean, our state has always been a natural trading partner. For decades before the Maduro regime came to power, Gulf oil refineries invested billions of dollars in technology to process the type of heavy crude that’s abundant in Venezuela. When that trade trickled down to almost nothing—because of the regime’s ineptitude and corruption, and then the sanctions Trump’s first administration began imposing in 2017—those refineries had to pivot to much more expensive and less plentiful supplies, mostly from Canada. From Port Arthur to Corpus to Galveston Bay, Texas refineries are licking their chops at the prospect of a Venezuelan oil bounce back.
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Beaumont Enterprise – February 9, 2026
Midland County seeks tips in series of crude oil thefts*
The Midland County Sheriff’s Office and Midland Crime Stoppers are requesting assistance in helping to solve multiple crude oil thefts across the county. According to a social media post by Midland Crime Stoppers, approximately 150 to 400 barrels of crude oil have been stolen from various companies and tank battery locations since December 2025.
“Unfortunately, cameras have not captured the suspect, so investigators are relying on the community,” Midland Crime Stoppers said. Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest or charges of those responsible for the thefts. To be eligible for a reward, a tip must be submitted through the Crime Stoppers hotline, mobile app or website. Law enforcement must act on the tip for an arrest to be made, or the case must be cleared. Tips submitted through other avenues are not eligible. No caller identification is ever used and the caller will remain anonymous.
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Fox News – February 9, 2026
Fracking is science, but not a dark one. To date, there have been about 2,000,000 frack jobs in the U.S. My company alone has done thousands of them without incident. Yet, the public has been slow to catch on, or is suspicious, or distrusting. That is mostly a byproduct of the culture wars and the rich deceiving the poor, but more on that below.
By process, rock mechanics determine the pressure needed to fracture an oil and gas formation. Completions engineers use that data to calculate fracture pressure and propagation, the amount of frac slurry required, and at what rate it should be pumped. A frack company then mobilizes on-site alongside a wireline company. Wireliners isolate the wellbore a few hundred feet at a time into “stages,” shooting 20 or 30 holes through the casing and then pull off. The frac fleet starts in with a mix of water, sand and chemicals that they pump down the vertical section of the wellbore, a mile or two deep, and then out into the horizontal section for another two, three, or four miles. Most shales are pumped at 3,800 gallons per minute against surface pressures of 10,000+/- psi.
Oil & Gas National & International
Oil Price – February 8, 2026
Big Oil’s Merger Boom Is Being Driven by a Surprisingly Small Club
The oil and gas sector is continuing to consolidate after years of ‘merger-mania’, with ramifications for the entire energy sector and wider economy. But a recent report reveals that the spate of mergers and acquisitions that has characterized the fossil fuels industry over the last decade is not as widespread as it may seem, but rather concentrated among a few key players.
A newly released report from the consulting firm Bain & Co found that, within the oil and gas sector, “fewer companies are doing more of the deals and creating more of the value.” In fact, over the last ten years, just 20 companies were responsible for 53% of total deal value when it comes to mergers and acquisitions within the sector.
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Oil Price – February 8, 2026
The U.S. LNG Boom Is Lowering Europe’s Energy Costs and Raising America’s
The United States has cemented its position as the world’s leading exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) over the past couple of years, thanks to surging natural gas demand in Europe and Asia. U.S. LNG exports hit a record 111 million tons in 2025, surpassing 100 million metric tons for the first time, driven by high utilization and new capacity additions from projects like Plaquemines LNG.
But this could be just the beginning of the U.S. LNG boom: the EIA has predicted that U.S. LNG export capacity will more than double by 2029, with an estimated 13.9 Bcf/d of new capacity added between 2025 and 2029 as projects like Plaquemines LNG Phase 1 and Corpus Christi Stage 3 reach full operations. Meanwhile, additional projects such as Delta LNG, CP2 LNG, and others are expected to further bolster capacity toward 2030.
Utilities, Electricity & Renewables
Houston Chronicle – February 9, 2026
TotalEnergies enters Texas AI power race with massive Google deal*
French oil major TotalEnergies plans to power Google’s Texas data centers with solar farms, staking its flag in the energy industry race to cash in on the state’s artificial intelligence power boom. Total’s solar agreement, announced Monday, stands out from a growing trend among oil and gas companies to nab lucrative power deals by promising the fastest developments — even if it means postponing the implementation of renewable options they’ve heavily invested in over the last few years.
Total, whose American headquarters is in Houston, said it agreed to deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity, enough to power 250,000 homes for one hot summer day in Texas. Marc-Antoine Pignon, Total’s vice president for U.S. renewables, said the deals mark the largest renewable power purchase agreements the company has ever signed in the United States. “This highlights TotalEnergies’ strategy to deliver tailored renewable energy solutions that support the decarbonization goals of digital players, particularly data centers,” Pignon said in a statement.
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Canary Media – February 9, 2026
Green hydrogen hype has dried up. This US startup is pressing on.
It’s a tough time for U.S. companies trying to make a go of green hydrogen. The Trump administration is threatening to cut billions of dollars in funding for hydrogen hubs and rapidly phasing out key tax incentives for the fuel. Major projects are getting canceled. Companies banking on the sector are struggling. And the wholesale abandonment of U.S. climate policy has undermined confidence in market prospects for low-carbon hydrogen that were already shaky before President Donald Trump won a second term.
Even so, Raffi Garabedian, CEO of U.S.-based electrolyzer manufacturer Electric Hydrogen, sees a path forward for his firm — and the industry as a whole.
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PV Tech – February 9, 2026
Electricity demand to grow rapidly in ‘new era’ for energy, says IEA
Global electricity demand is set to grow 2.5 times as fast as overall energy demand by 2030, ushering in what the International Energy Agency (IEA) has dubbed the “Age of Electricity”. The increase in electricity demand will be driven by electrification in the transport, industrial and building sectors, as well as the growth of data centres and AI. New AI and data centre industries mean that electricity consumption from advanced economies is “rising after 15 years of stagnation”, the IEA said, and wealthy nations are set to contribute around one-fifth of increasing power demand by 2030.
“A fundamental shift in the longstanding relationship between electricity demand and economic activity” will be “a defining feature” of the next four years, the IEA said in its Electricity 2026 report. The resurgence of demand growth in advanced economies “signals a new era in which electricity is a major energy input to some of the most dynamic drivers of global economies, such as AI, data centres and advanced manufacturing,” the report said. Both the US and EU are expected to see an average annual electricity demand increase of around 2% through 2030, and around half of demand growth in the US is set to come from data centre expansion.
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Reuters – February 9, 2026
Rising US industrial load intensifies power generation need*
As data centers spearhead a surge in demand for new power generation in the United States, rising demand from industrial manufacturing is also creating opportunities for developers. U.S. peak power demand is forecast to rise by 120 GW over the next five years, of which industrial consumption will account for about 24 GW, according to analysts at ICF. Oil and gas remains a key driver of industrial power demand and companies continue to seek efficiencies from electrification.
Total U.S. electricity sales to large customers are on the rise after decades of flat or declining load, due to rising demand from data centers and the oil and gas sector as well as some specific manufacturing sectors such as semiconductor and battery production, Ben Levitt, Associate Director, North America Power and Renewables Research, S&P Global Energy, told Reuters Events.
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Utility Dive – February 6, 2026
Utilities face cost-recovery risk as infrastructure costs, demand rise: Morningstar
Electric utilities are preparing for a major infrastructure buildout to meet growing demand while the cost for key transmission and distribution equipment is rising, sparking cost-recovery concerns, according to a brief released Wednesday by Morningstar DBRS. AI data centers are driving demand growth forecasts, but are also leading to inflation in the cost of the metals and grid-critical materials that are used in data centers, analysts with the credit ratings agency said in the brief, Beyond Power Demand: How AI-Driven Metals Inflation Is Testing Utility Regulation.
“For regulated utilities, this dynamic represents a shift from a pure demand-growth narrative toward a system-cost stress test, where rising capital intensity, regulatory recovery mechanisms, and customer affordability increasingly intersect,” the Morningstar analysts said.
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News from the States – February 5, 2026
With electricity bills rising, some states consider new data center laws
As Americans grow increasingly frustrated over their electricity bills, states are trying to keep the nation’s growing number of data centers from causing higher energy costs for consumers. For years, many states competed aggressively to land data centers, sprawling campuses full of the computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites. But many officials are now scrutinizing how those power-hungry projects might affect the electric bills of households, small businesses and other industries.
Oregon last year became one of the first states to enact a law requiring utilities to charge data centers different electric prices than other industries because of how they drive up the cost of energy production and transmission.
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The Hill – January 23, 2026
Coal by decree is not an energy strategy: Brian C. Murray, Duke University
In the middle of President Trump’s first term, a tale of two power plants reflected the nation’s seemingly irrevocable course of turning from high carbon dioxide-emitting coal to non-emitting nuclear and renewables. In Arizona, the Navajo coal-fired power plant closed in November 2019, despite efforts by the first Trump administration to keep it open.
The administration tried forcing the federally constructed but locally-run Central Arizona Project to purchase Navajo’s power and even sought a private buyer for the plant. But the numbers just didn’t pencil out — it was too expensive to operate, the private deal fell through, and the project got its power elsewhere.
Regulatory
Politico – February 7, 2026
BLM sets date for March oil lease sale in Alaska*
The Trump administration will offer 5.5 million acres on Alaska’s North Slope for oil and gas leasing, opening up a huge expanse of public land where Democratic administrations previously sought to restrict development. The Bureau of Land Management scheduled a lease sale for March 9 in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), a 23-million-acre preserve in northern Alaska that is home to caribou and migratory birds.
The sale by the Interior Department agency is mandated by last year’s Republican megalaw, which requires five sales in the NPR-A by 2035. Bids for the upcoming sale must be received by 4 p.m. Alaska time on March 5, according to a Federal Register notice set to be published Friday. “The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska plays a vital role in advancing America’s energy independence, and Congress has repeatedly made clear their intent for timely leasing and responsible development in the region,” acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said in a statement Thursday.