Companies that have ties to the Chinese Communist Party are reportedly drilling oil in Tarrant County and are paying multiple lobbyists to do their bidding in the Texas legislature.
According to new findings from Tarrant County GOP, Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin owns GHA Barnett LLC, which is currently extracting oil from both Dallas and Tarrant counties. GHA Barnett LLC has more than 50 wells it is removing oil from—30 in Dallas and 34 in Tarrant.
In 2015, Guangxin began acquiring land to develop a wind turbine farm in South Texas. Eventually, Guangxin bought around 140,000 acres in Val Verde, roughly seven percent of all land in the county. In 2019, five years after acquisitions began, the proposed development of a wind farm on the land led to an uproar in Texas and across the nation.
While Guangxin is extracting oil from the two counties, he is not alone.
The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation is under the direct control of the CCP and is pumping out oil in the Eagle Ford Shale—where an outcrop can be seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
The CNOOC is 100 percent owned by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and has deep connections to both the Chinese government that sustains it and the Texas energy industry. CNOOC has received numerous favors from the Chinese central government, including exclusive oil exploration and production rights, subsidies, and tax breaks. As of 2020, according to Fitch Ratings, China National Offshore Oil Corporation owns a 64.44 percent stake in China National Offshore Oil Corporation Limited, a company involved in foreign investment.
CNOOC has dropped $2 billion in Texas and along the Gulf of Mexico where they have a Houston office.
Another notable foreign player in the Texas energy industry is a company called Surge Energy, which is based in Houston. Surge is a subsidiary of a Chinese company called Shandong Xinchao Energy, formerly known as Yantai Xinchao. In 2015, Shandong Xinchao Energy made its first investment in the state of Texas: an oil asset composed of 5,000 acres in Crosby County known as Hoople Field.
The company, through subsidiaries Surge Energy and Blue Whale Energy North America, has acquired 79,000 acres in Howard and Borden counties—located in West Texas. Shandong Xinchao recently spent at least $420 million, expanding its control of the West Texas oilfields.
While the companies are drilling on Texas’ land, they are also paying lobbyists to do their bidding in Austin.
GHA Barnett has multiple lobbyists in Austin, paying the five of them up to $154,250.
Pioneer Natural Resources had eight lobbyists in Austin on their behalf, and Surge Energy had one of Texas’ top energy lobbyists, Chris Hosek, working for them, paying him up to $101,090.
“This is a wake-up call. The CCP isn’t just investing; they’re infiltrating. They’re buying up our land, our resources, and now our legislature,” wrote Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French. “Don’t let this stand. We need to act now. Tell your representative to end Chinese land ownership in Texas and to stop being wined and dined by CCP lobbyists. Demand transparency, demand protection of our state, and demand that Texas remains American, not a CCP playground.”
