The Texas Legislature has taken steps to protect the state’s leading industry after it passed the Oil & Gas Investment Protection Act last year, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is poised to use the tool against a company he says is violating the law.
According to the Texas Legislature website, by passing the act, lawmakers want to prevent state funds from investing in financial companies that boycott the state’s primary industry. The website noted that the law also requires a list of companies who refuse to do business with energy companies to be maintained by the Comptroller of Public Accounts, who is tasked with contacting them to let them know the state will quit doing business with them if a boycott continues.
“When the Senate passed Senate Bill 13, we made it clear that Texans will not tolerate Wall Street turning its back on our flourishing oil and gas industry and the millions of Texans who rely upon it,” Patrick said in a statement in the news release.
In the news release, Patrick noted that he sent a letter to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar asking to place Blackrock Inc. on a list of companies that boycott the Lone Star State’s oil and gas industry under the act.
“As long as I am lieutenant governor, I will never back down from defending our oil and gas industry and I remain committed to ensuring Texas is the top state for oil and gas in America,” Patrick added in the statement included in the news release.
In the news release, Patrick noted that BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink has indicated in a letter to CEOs that the company hopes to move toward a “net zero” world, which would include moving away from fossil fuels for energy, with the lieutenant governor taking this and other comments as a swipe at the state’s oil and gas industry.
“These statements indicate that BlackRock is capriciously discriminating against the oil and gas industry by exiting investments solely because companies do not subscribe to a 'net zero' policy beyond what is required by law,” Patrick said in the letter to Hegar included in the press release.
Moreover, a Wall Street Journal report noted that in a 2022 letter to a number of companies having investments with BlackRock, Fink claimed that companies that aren’t planning for a carbon-free future without fossil fuels could be left out, and his company is leading the move toward “net zero.” In the 2022 letter posted online, Fink also noted that the company doesn’t have a policy of divesting from oil and gas firms.
The recent letter wasn’t the first that Fink has issued on the topic, with the CEO commenting in a 2020 letter on the company’s website, that climate change is a key issue and key to a company’s future prospects, while touting investment products that weed out fossil fuels.
The company, which according to Wikipedia was founded in 1988, is among the world’s largest asset managers, boasting $10 trillion in its management.