President of Texas Oil & Gas Association: Ukraine crisis shows link between national security, energy security

CARTHAGE, Texas (KLTV) - The president of Texas Oil & Gas Association says the crisis in Ukraine should be a wake-up call when it comes to energy policy.

Speaking at a meeting of the East Texas Gas Producers Association in Carthage, Todd Staples said the conflict painfully demonstrates the link between national security and energy security.

“The invasion of Ukraine really highlighted that,” Staples said in an interview with KLTV. “And I talked (today) about the need to talk about the importance of oil and gas in our daily lives. How oil and natural gas is the basic building block of 96% of the components that we use each and every day. And we need to be telling that story.”

Staples says pain being felt by consumers at the gas pump is the result of things like cancelled pipeline projects, delayed approvals for permits, and poor short-sighted decisions, all made worse by the war.

“In America, the message has been we want to stop oil and gas production and we want to move it to other parts of the world,” he said. “And that has led to this situation being compounded, being much worse on consumers who are paying much higher prices at the pump than they have to pay,” Staples said.

And he says expanding oil and natural gas production takes time, requiring planning and investment.

“The marketplace has to work these things out,” he said. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Staples said efforts by the Biden administration have hindered energy growth and security.

“If we want energy security, and we also want to reach environmental goals, the only way to do that is to have domestically-produced energy.” Staples said. “And have oil and gas jobs in Texas and in America, not in other countries around the globe.”

The former Texas agriculture commissioner and Anderson County native also noted that Texas is the leader in oil and gas production, responsible for about 43-percent of the country’s total oil production. Staples said Texas and the U.S. play a very important role in stability by providing reliable energy at home and abroad.

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