Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples told a Texas House committee that West Texas needs new electric generation and transmission capacity now, warning that delaying the buildout will only raise its eventual cost.
Staples testified before the House Committee on State Affairs on electricity demand and transmission capabilities in the region, according to an Aug. 19 release from the association. He described West Texas as the epicenter of American energy security and said production there increased 430 percent over the decade from 2015 to 2025.
“The reality is a pause on the clock only stops the solution; it doesn’t stop the clock on the problem,” Staples said in remarks excerpted by the association. “We all know that when you pause these solutions, it increases the cost when you ultimately get to it.”
The transmission shortfall has been documented for more than a decade, Staples said, noting that ERCOT assessments dating to 2019 specifically identified deficiencies in West Texas and began contemplating solutions. He also said the region’s reliability plan was contemplated and passed long before data centers became a topic of debate in Texas, and that it is needed separately from that issue.
On the question of who pays, Staples said the association has never supported transmission without customers to fund it. “We’re going to pay for our share of what we’re using. There are six gigawatts of unmet demand that’s ready to be signed up for, ready to be paid for, and we’re ready to go,” he said. Staples added that the group strongly believes the rights of private property owners should be protected and urged regulators to consider landowner concerns raised at the hearing.
Natural gas generation alone cannot solve the problem, Staples said, calling it “an engineering and physical matter” of moving electrons to where they are needed, and noting that association members produce 90 percent of the natural gas produced in Texas. In a companion op-ed for the Midland Reporter-Telegram cited in the release, Staples wrote that transmission serving West Texas is so constrained that ERCOT has notified regional power users they will likely face rotating outages at peak times.