Hacker News Reader

Isn't it also the Railroad Commissioner who deals with things like oil wells? I think that came up in an article about old oil wells that were flooding ranchland with salt water in East Texas thanks to the practice of pumping water into oil reserves to boost pressure for active wells.

I'd love to understand how the Railroad Commissioner ended up responsible for energy.

View on HN

They are the head of oil and gas in the state so very likely. The history is complicated to say the least. They don’t even run the railroad anymore. It’s all energy related. The name of the office should be changed but the oil and gas companies probably want the office to keep flying under the public’s radar.

It started by taking over regulation of pipelines in the 1910s. That seems like a logical step to me, but over time their purview has expanded to O&G plants and energy production. They aren’t responsible for public utilities, but a lot of the winterization plans were around upgrading pipelines that froze in the storm.

According to Wikipedia they haven’t dealt with rail since 2005, but it’s been a lot longer since the RRs were politically relevant to the office.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com