I'm going to focus on personal reasons for the GACK, not professional; I've taken care of that angle elsewhere.
Per communication I've seen, she's peddling an op-ed by Hawk Dunlap for other newspapers besides hers to use.
Problem? One on the professional side; actually, a serious of connected issues there.
Who is Dunlap?
He's a currently active candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission. (He also ran in 2024, as a Libertarian. I'll just leave that there for now.)
As for Dunlap the candidate? He's almost certainly better than GOP incumbent James Wright. Doesn't matter.
Yes, he wants oil companies, especially the majors who buy up old wells of many independents when their money gets tight, to "do the right thing."
Mother Jones just did a semi-puff piece on him. Takeout:
Dunlap is well acquainted with the problem. For 30 years, he worked for oil and gas companies to fix and plug wells all over the world. “I enjoy the outdoors,” he explained. “I used to hunt. I fish, I scuba dive, I play golf. I’m not housebroke, so I’m not inside an awful lot. I care about land, I care about landowners’ rights, I care about water. If that makes me an environmentalist, then so be it. That’s a label that, you know”—his tone turned mocking—“‘Oh, you’re an environmentalist.’ Yeah, okay, I’m a tree hugger. I’ll hug any tree that doesn’t have thorns.”
Is he actually an environmentalist? Uhh, no. Does he care about climate change? Does he even think climate change is "real"? Probably not.
As for Dunlap thinking Chevron used to be "good guys"? Bullshit, as severe-weather venting at Permian natural-gas plants during Winter Storm Fern showed. Chevron is among listed companies.
As for this puffery:
Dunlap has become part of an unlikely band of folks living in West Texas who are trying to force the government and industry to address the abandoned oil well catastrophe. There’s Ashley Watt, the owner of Antina Ranch, who has sued oil companies, including Chevron, for the damage they allegedly did to her land. There’s Laura Briggs, whose family runs two local newspapers and who has been a critic of state regulators for years. There’s Schuyler Wight, a fourth-generation rancher, who for the past three years has traveled hundreds of miles to Austin almost every month to give officials a piece of his mind. And there’s Stogner, a take-no-prisoners attorney whose talent for making viral videos—including a campaign ad she filmed of herself straddling a pumpjack wearing nothing but star-shaped pasties and a cowboy hat—has gotten tens of thousands of people to pay attention to this complex issue.
Uh, no, Sharon Wilson and her fellow methane hunters are the real environmentalists. (Per the link immediately above, she notes that severe-weather venting happens in extreme summers, too.) Yes, the folks listed above are addressing well blowouts. And, anything else?
Well, even with well blowouts, it's more personal than environmental, and MoJo at least gets Watt to admit it:
In Texas, where landowners often do not control the rights to the minerals under their property, and oil and gas companies regularly do, a unique political identity has emerged. “I’m not necessarily an environmentalist on all land, but I’m definitely an environmentalist on my land,” Watt said. “That is a very common flavor of West Texas landowner. As you can imagine, West Texas ranchers skew conservative. From an environmental perspective, they could probably care less about saving the whales, but they care a whole lot about their land.”
A Houston Chronic piece makes that even more clear, noting Watt is a "Houston energy entrepreneur," and that the site is inherited family property.
To add to this, MoJo author Molly Taft identifies herself as a "climate journalist," but the phrase "climate change" is nowhere in her story. She does once mention methane as a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide.
SO, why run a piece this long?
It should also be noted, contra the implications of the article, that "split estates" are common in most oil and gas states, except, I believe, California and Alaska, and in Alaska, the North Slope is federal land. Feds can reserve mineral estate rights when selling surface land, too. And, the "mineral estate" means just that — coal, iron ore or gold, not just oil and gas. To be more technical, per this piece, there's a difference between mineral estate, ie, what's below the surface, and mineral rights, ie, exactly what a mineral estate owner can and cannot do to get at that estate. In general, throughout the US, a mineral estate has dominant rights position over the surface estate. Cleanup issues are worst with oil and gas drilling, but within that industry, alleged remediation lackadaisicalness is not limited to Texas.
As for the election? Dems have a candidate for the general. Greens? Nobody. Alfred Molison, who ran in 2024, move over to the Ag commissioner race.
Finally, on Bellsnyder pushing Dunlap? "Not an environmentalist" would apply to her seemingly wanting the blank checks of Proposition 4 to keep overpumping the Ogallala Aquifer. Per a not-so-hot quip of hers, I don't know if she found the "right" to do that in her Constitution or her Bible.
