HOUSTON—In the midst of an oil and gas price downturn, Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton sees an opportunity for the state of Texas to take back what is theirs.

The key, he says, is lifting the federal ban on crude oil exports.

If the export ban on crude is lifted, then the country, and more specifically Texas, will have the upper hand in setting global oil prices Sitton said at the Houston Petroleum Club’s IPAA/TIPRO luncheon on March 11.

“Energy independence is just a step in the process,” he said. “What we should be talking about is when do we get back to the point that we control global energy prices.”

Sitton and his fellow Texas Railroad Commissioners, Christi Craddick and David Porter, testified on March 9 to the Texas House of Representatives in support of a resolution that urges Congress to lift the federal ban. The resolution is currently pending in the Texas House.

Sitton, who is the founder of Pasadena, Texas-based Pinnacle AIS, an engineering and technology company, said the challenge for the industry is public perception.

“People believe a couple of things that are not true,” he said. “First of all, they believe all crudes are the same.”

As Sitton pointed out, there’s a difference between heavy and light crude and sour and sweet crude. Texas oil wells, for example, produce light sweet crude, which is in high demand in Asia and Europe.

As of March 13, futures for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil were selling $10 per barrel less than the international crude benchmark, Brent. He said the differential between WTI and Brent is driven by the country’s excess of light sweet crude, mostly in Texas, and its inability to move it to market.

“We could export crude oil because this is not going to be just about having enough energy; it’s going to be about competing on global scale,” he said. “We got to have our citizens confident. They have to be excited about this opportunity and not concerned about our procedures.”

For example, at the same time Sitton was voted into office in November, the community of Denton, Texas, decided to ban hydraulic fracturing from its city limits.

This is not an uncommon event, he said. More and more communities are trying to put “unscientifically-based restrictions” in place because they are not confident in what the industry is doing.

One of the biggest concerns is that people don’t even know who’s “minding the store,” he said. “They don’t know that our operators and oil and gas producers around this state do want good regulation.”

He encouraged members of the industry to inform the public on issues such as environmental safety to boost support for future development.

Sitton also gave some insight into the history of Texas’ involvement in the oil and gas industry.

According to Sitton, Texas historically steered global oil prices—not OPEC. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the Texas Railroad Commission set oil prices by managing proration levels in the state. It wasn’t until the Middle East oil embargo in 1973 that OPEC realized that they could control global prices.

“If someone were to say to you, ‘What was the formula that OPEC uses? How did that develop?’ …. They stole it from the Texas Railroad Commission,” he said.

Sitton closed out his speech with a hope for his children to be able to tell a different story about the energy industry.

“I have this dream that when they tell this story they will say it was in the 1970s that we lost control of energy prices, but it was in the 2020s that we got it back,” he said. “I think that’s the type of thing that could change the world. It’s a legacy that all of us could be very proud of.

“The opportunities are there,” he said. “This is an opportunity we haven’t seen in 15 years. If we work together, there will be opportunities for us to do some truly spectacular things in this industry.”

Contact the author, Emily Moser, at emoser@hartenergy.com.