The Natural Gas Debate and a Journey Back to Founding Principles

Rick Green: 0:07

Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture. This is WallBuilders. We're always taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator and America's Constitution coach, and it's my honor to be here with the Barton family. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallB uilders.

Rick Green: 0:24

David Barton, America's premier historian and our founder at WallB uilders and, of course, WallB uilders, comes from the scripture in Nehemiah that says a rise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be able to reproach. For us to do that, to rebuild the walls, we have to do it right, by our homes, just like in the book of Nehemiah. So we start there you got to rebuild in your community, in your neighborhood, and then branch out to your state and, of course, the nation. But to do all of that, to equip people to do the job that Nehemiah did in that day, takes money. You know he was backed with some pretty significant dollars by the king, right? Well, we don't want government backing, we want your backing, we want your support, we want to band together and you can do that in small ways or big ways, whatever the Lord puts on your heart. But if you go to wallbuilders. com today and make that contribution, it helps us to continue this message, to teach truth, to defend truth, to equip and inspire others to do those things. And you can be a partner in that by donating at wallbuilders. com today.

Rick Green: 1:16

Lives, fortunes, sacred honor we skip that second one too much, right. But lives, that's our time. Go, become a Constitution coach, Start hosting classes, start doing your part. Fortunes, yes, donating, making sure we're investing in good candidates, good causes out there. And then sacred honor standing up for truth, being willing to say what's right and to speak against what's wrong, even in a culture that wants to cancel you for it. We're certainly not afraid to do that here at WallBuilders, and we know you're not as well. So thanks for listening to us today. Alright, David, and Tim, we got Phil King with us today. Of course, I don't know how anybody stays in the legislature with constituents like you know, David Barton and Tim Barton but somehow he has managed to maintain his reputation and stay in office. Anyway, great friend of all of ours, and he'll be with us a little bit later. We're going to be talking about energy today and I think people are going to be shocked at some of the things they hear.

David Barton: 2:08

Yeah, one of the things that has really come out in the Biden administration is they have gone way above any previous president in previous administration and trying to get completely away from fossil fuels and trying to get I mean, they have bought into the climate change narrative more than any previous president. We thought Obama was really bad on this, and not at all I mean he was

David Barton: 2:32

but he's like in the kindergarten compared to where Biden administration is. This is postgraduate stuff they're doing, and so they've already passed initiatives. They have banned the use of incadesolide bulbs, and so what's happening to the Biden administration? They're attempting to ban anything that has to do with fossil fuels, and high on their list has been all the stuff dealing with natural gas. Whether they're trying to do anything that like, whether it be gas stoves or natural gas vehicles or anything else, they want that shutdown Now, significantly, 40% of our energy in the United States comes from natural gas.

David Barton: 3:05

Whether it's natural gas that's being used to power energy plants, electricity plants, et cetera, 40% of our energy uses comes from natural gas, and this is something they've really targeted, and so much of this has happened without much notice. I happen to be on a...there's a group of us, just a couple dozen people on a list with one of the chief editors at US News and World Report, and he is really watching what the Biden administration is doing the climate change and he sends us these announcements out of one office or another somewhere in the administration. Here's what they're doing, here's what they just announced, here's what they're trying to move forward, and I have been absolutely shocked at how fast they have moved these initiatives forward and how little coverage there has been on them. And so this attempt that they've got going right now to shut down natural gas or any type of use of it in the administration, claiming that it's part of climate change to destroy the planet, destroy our way of life what they're doing is going to destroy our way of life in the short term, that's absolutely sure.

David Barton: 4:05

And, as it turns out, their, their whole models on climate change have been disproved time and time again, just like their models on COVID and everything else was disproved, and they keep holding these, these old narratives. It seems to be more about we want to control the people and we want full control over them. We want to take away their choices, decisions, and so as I was reading the stuff he recently sent me on this natural gas stuff, I was reminded that here a couple of weeks ago, Phil King and I were talking about natural gas in Texas and and he was taking me through stats and taking me through ways that we use natural gas that I was not even aware of and the impact on the nation natural gas not only Texas but Wyoming and elsewhere, and so when I saw this stuff with the Biden administration, I thought, hey, why don't we get Phil on? Because he's an energy expert in the state of Texas and state government. He's one of the leading guys that understands about different forms of energy and drilling and what does and doesn't work.

David Barton: 5:02

He was that was the committee he helped run in the house and so he's really an expert on this. And just talking to him over that, that lunch we had together, it was revolutionary for me and I learned things I had never heard and so I thought, all right, with what Biden's trying to do right now which is still pretty much under the radar, unless you like reading press releases from way down agencies, way down in the food chain it's pretty significant what they're trying to do. So Phil is going to be a great voice to talk to it and kind of explain what they're doing.

Rick Green: 5:31

stay All right, folks, stay with us. We'll be right back. State Senator Phil King from Texas with us when we return on The WallBuilders Show.

David Barton: 5:40

This is David Barton, with another moment from America's history. Often today it seems that the federal government has become too intrusive into local matters, and federal micro management has now unfortunately become the norm in education, law enforcement, religious expressions and even on what is and is not moral. Strikingly, the founding fathers had intended that the federal government never intrude into any of these issues. As Thomas Jefferson explained, taking from the states the moral rule of their citizens and subordinating it to the federal government would break up the foundations of the union. I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones. According to Thomas Jefferson, the original plan was for the federal government to direct foreign affairs but for the states and local communities to direct the domestic and the moral ones. For more information on God's hand in American history, contact Walbuilders at 1-800-8-REBUILD.

Rick Green: 6:43

Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Our good friend Phil King back with us from Weatherford, Texas, actually, David and Tim's state rep for years and now state senator over on the Senate side of the Texas Capitol. Phil, always good to have you, man. Thanks for coming back on. We won't tell people how old we are and that we came into the legislature together as freshmen, because that was you know, and we did.

Phil King: 7:04

Good to be back! You were younger than I was then. So I mean, you know, really don't want to talk about it.

Rick Green: 7:09

Yeah, yeah, we'll leave that alone. Hey, David was talking to you the other day and the subject of natural gas came up and of course there's all these crazy you know Biden efforts based on the you know climate. They say change, I say hoax, but but it's a big deal in Texas. And he said, you know, it was just shocking the numbers and how much natural gas Texas has. And so he said, man, get Phil on, let's get an update and kind of find out what this looks like. And are they, you know, are the feds going to try to stop some of the production that's happening in Texas? But, more importantly, you know what is the difference? And is natural gas something that can help power the world and power things as much as you know oil and is Texas taking advantage of that? Well, yeah, it has a lot of questions, wasn't it?

Rick Green: 8:00

It feels like, okay, let's see which of those 30 questions do I take first.

Phil King: 8:03

Well, let's start at the basics and say you know what do we mean when we say natural gas? Natural gas is a fossil fuel. You sometimes drill a oil well and you'll get produced natural gas and you'll produce oil with that as well. You produce. there's a lot of zones where it all it does like in my area it's just pure natural gas, has some liquids in with it, but it's mainly natural gas, which is methane really at its purest form. We've all been using it in our homes and everywhere for years I mean for forever. We have a tremendous abundance of natural gas under the ground in the United States. Texas alone can power things for hundreds of years, certainly in Texas, probably all across the United States. We now, what's interesting? You back to that? Oh, and, by the way, here's what's interesting too.

Phil King: 8:57

Not too many years ago, all the climate change folks were saying we need to get off a coal and we need to go to natural gas because it burns so clean. And it does. It burns clean. You get to burn it in your house on your range, right? But then when natural gas there was a little bit of a shortage of it back then and then around 2007, eight, nine, if you remember we all of a sudden, someone figured out how to do this hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling and we had these big shale plays, the own shale plays. And so now, whereas you know back, I don't know 2003, four, five, we were starting to build import facilities where we could import natural gas from other nations because it was getting kind of pricey here. All of a sudden we figured out how to get it out of these shale deposits and all of a sudden then we started, we turned that around and we built export facilities.

Rick Green: 9:57

So we were actually we were actually going to buy it from other countries because we couldn't get enough for our own demand.

Phil King: 10:03

We were building ports to import it in Texas and other states. Liquefied natural gas they just compress it, you know, get it into a smaller container. So in 2016, all of a sudden, we started exporting. We got our first export terminal up and running I think that was one of Sheneers and so now we're exporting all this natural gas to Europe and other regions of the world. But think about this; one of the big holds, the big hold that Putin has had over much of Europe, is he provides their natural gas. If we stop exporting natural gas which is what the Biden administration is talking about doing if we stop exporting it, all you're doing is going to have that vacuum filled by China and by Russia, and they're just going to be more and more beholden in Europe to those totalitarian regimes.

Rick Green: 11:03

why in the world would they not want us to export? Like, what's the downside to us selling to other countries, using one of our assets to make money, especially if we're not running out here?

Phil King: 11:12

Well, and particularly when you think of the volume, like you said, if we're not running out here. I mean, Texas is the United States top producer of natural gas and we're just our state is the third leading producer of natural gas in the entire world. I think Australia and Qatar maybe be the number one and number two, but we're number three. It makes no sense. It's cheap, very affordable, clean.

Phil King: 11:40

When you turned on the lights at your house today, more than likely wherever you are in the United States, there's a very good chance and certainly in Texas that it was a natural gas fired power plant that that just burns that natural gas, just like that natural gas that's burning in your heater in your house, just like that natural gas that's burning on the range in your kitchen.

Phil King: 12:01

It's the same, the same compound. And why he would want not only why would he want us to not export it, where we can make a lot of money, create tons of jobs and clean up the air, because it is cleaner, easier to make clean than coal why he would want to turn that off, but much less why we don't want to tell you, like they're doing in many states and trying to do at the federal level that you can't have a natural gas fired water heater at your house? You can't have natural gas heat, you can't have natural gas ranges. It makes no sense at all, unless you kind of subscribe to this religion of climate change and believe that, no matter what the economic impact, we've got to get rid of all fossil fuels.

Rick Green: 12:48

And this helped me, and I'm very ignorant about this, so help me out here. I drive by a lot of these Shell areas Eagle for Shell in Texas, some of these other places and I see a lot of these places where they're burning off natural gas. Why? Why are they doing that? Is that because we don't have, or is that the same natural gas we're talking about here? And if so, is it just because we don't have the infrastructure? It's not worth it? You know that that, too, seems like we're.. maybe we got an asset there. Why are we losing it?

Phil King: 13:16

And that is a real problem. It's called flaring. It's called flaring. Part of it's done for safety reasons and you'll see at some facilities, but mainly it's it's that they've got a producing only gas well and the they're taking out the liquids, because the liquids are are worth a lot today. That might be like condos, a propane, butane those things come out of those, those gas wells, but the natural gas itself is so inexpensive because it is so abundant that it's cheaper to just burn it off, get the liquids out of the well. It's because it's too expensive to build a gathering system and a pipeline system to get it to the marketplace.

Rick Green: 14:02

Which is just further evidence that we've got more than we need. Why wouldn't we be selling it to other

Phil King: 14:08

Legitimately speaking, is a tremendous waste of an asset and it and it is putting things out there into the air, although it still burns very clean, but anytime you burn something, something comes out of it. So we do have major programs going on in Texas and across the United States to cap these flares and deal with them in different ways, and and that's well, well under way.

Phil King: 14:32

But that's what you see when you drive by at night down in South Texas. So maybe up in the Dakotas, North Dakota you see flaring burning in wells, that's what it is. It's just so abundant but it's so, and therefore so cheap, that it's not worth the building of the pipeline. You can't transport natural gas, well you can, but it's really pricey to transport it in trucks. You really have to do it in pipelines.

Rick Green: 14:56

Yeah, so the pipeline then, of course, is another. Just that's just a trigger word for a lot of these climate folks, and they don't want that either. But that would be a great way. Is that even it on the horizon, you think? If the price starts going up?

Phil King: 15:09

Oh, new infrastructure is being built every day to get that, that gas to market, and so it's not like they know that that gas is always gonna be flared, it's just it's being flared right now. Until the infrastructure is in place, let me tell you there is infrastructure being built all over Texas and other producing states as well, I presume.

Rick Green: 15:31

Well, Phil, how would you summarize the difference in just worldview, philosophy, strategy on energy, with the left, and you know very much the Biden administration versus a Trump-type administration, or when Rick Perry was Secretary of Energy, kind of the Texas mentality, if you will? Just the difference in those philosophies and the difference in the results.

Phil King: 15:54

Well, at the most fundamental level, it's a belief that we should go entirely to natural renewable what they consider to be natural renewable in clean ways of producing electricity, as opposed, or energy in itself, as opposed to using fossil fuels, and fossil fuels think in terms of coal, natural gas, petroleum, that type of thing. The irony in that is, I was speaking to a group the other day

Phil King: 16:25

It was a group that was very focused on climate change. I asked them, I said who in here would completely power your house by wind or by solar, if you could do that? Not a single hand went up and I said the reason nobody raised their hand is because you don't trust it enough, because you know the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine and there's going to be times at your house that you're completely out of electricity and that's why you want the only other thing there is, which is fossil fuels, I guess, other than nuclear, but fossil fuels to produce that electricity for your home. It's almost hard to talk about, Rick, because nothing about it makes sense.

Phil King: 17:10

We've got more wind farms in Texas than any other state by far we produce more electricity with wind. But we almost ran out of electricity just last week because of a three day really hard cold snap because the wind wasn't blowing and those turbines don't work well in five or six degree weather and we almost ran out of electricity. Then we had a cloud cover, like you often get for a few days. Well, guess what solar doesn't do well during those time. There is a place for wind and there's a place for solar, certainly place for batteries as temporary electricity storage in this idea of having an electric grid, but it is a pretty small place. The real key is fossil fuels, which God has given us a ton of in the

Phil King: 17:57

United States and nuclear. You know nuclear they keep talking about. You know we're almost there 10 years from now with every heavy modular units that that they're going to let us put in. I don't believe the federal government will ever let them put it in. There has not been a nuclear power plant which is clean and stable. There has not been a nuclear power plant built, I believe, in the entire United States since the 19,. I guess it was licensed in the early 1980s, mid 1980s, in Texas, Comanche Peak. I do not believe there's been another single license issued by the regulatory, federal regulatory authorities since then. So I don't think they're going to let us bring it back. A lot of people do, but I don't. So I think fossil fuels what you're going to have to depend on. And again, they're clean, they're abundant. Heck. In Texas, even with the pressure from the Biden administration, we're now producing over 5 million barrels of oil every single day, every single day.

Rick Green: 18:58

Well, the world needs it. We need it for sure, and the better we do on that end, the less reliant we are on nations that, frankly, would would love to undermine it so they possibly can. It's a whole nother conversation. Nearly out of time, but I'm going to fish here for a quick commercial. You recently did what you did a couple years ago. Our, you know, WallB uilders has this Constitution Alive class that that folks across the nation have done, but we also then created Biblical Citizenship in Modern America and you're holding a class right now at your house. I think you did week two or three or whatever in the last few days. How's it going? How are people responding?

Phil King: 19:32

It's going great. You know, the first time we did the Constitutional Program that you put together is eight or ten DVDs and we did that. It was great! Everybody loved it. This is a small group from our church that meets at our house every other Sunday night. So that was several years ago, maybe five years ago. Well, now you've got the new biblical citizenship program and we just started it. We've done one week so far.

Phil King: 19:55

What I'm really impressed with it is it makes it so easy for me as the host. I go to your website, I get my students sign up on an email, I send them from the website. Then every time I want to send them something, I want to send them a document, I want to just remind them about the meeting, anything like that. I push one button after typing out a one or two sentence email and you've got all kind of teaching helps for me there, although I'll be honest with you, it's so laid out because you've got the workbook online. You said you had hard copies of the workbook.

Phil King: 20:30

Really, all I have to do is a group leader. It's a pretty simple thing, which is one of the things I really like about it. I don't really have to prepare, I just have to turn on YouTube and and Download it, livestream it. We watch it. Everybody's already got the materials and when I need to talk to them about a meeting upcoming or something like that, I just push send from your website and it goes out to them. It is an easy deal and everybody's in love in the class.

Rick Green: 20:55

Well, the most important thing is, did you put out some good you know cookies, cake, coffee, or to Terry, take care, you know, did you do it? Do them right?

Phil King: 21:04

No, we always do a potluck. Yeah, we take turns on who brings dinner every week and we've been meeting five or six years. Here's what's interesting; almost all the people that went through it last time are still in our group and they wanted to go through it again, but in this different program.

Rick Green: 21:23

Yeah well that's great, man, love it, love it. Love it. Well, Phil, God bless you, brother . Thanks for the update on the energy side. Look forward to getting you back soon. Tell Terry Howdy from all of us at WallB uilders. Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 21:39

Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallB uilders, called the American story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today. And, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly Not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America.

Tim Barton: 22:16

Well, is America worth defending? Well, what is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out, WallB uilders. com the American story.

Rick Green: 22:43

We're back here on the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Phil King for joining us talking a little energy today. Guys, we've had Phil on on so many different subjects. I tell you, when you serve in the legislature like that, you've got to cover all of those different subjects. He's chaired so many different committees dealing with those subjects. It's great to have an expert like that on speed dial.

David Barton: 23:03

You know he's also got a lot of expertise in other states as well because, as being the former president of ALIC and that's really one of the largest legislative organizations of the nation I think there's 2,500 state legislators there which means he has to keep up with this in all the states. That's why he's so good on so many issues is because he's leading a national organization like that. They really are good on so many issues. It just strikes me as interesting in the way that the Biden administration is so concerned that this is going to hurt us to have these kind of fossil fuels, that's going to be bad for us, and that they don't have any compunction at all in promoting lifestyles and behaviors that definitely hurts you and they hurt you in the immediate and the long term.

David Barton: 23:46

You know the things that they've been with the abortion. How many hundred studies do we have on the psychological, mental, physical and emotional impact of abortions on women? And the same thing with the type of sexuality and the gender stuff they're pushing. I mean the studies are countless. So it's really weird that they want to protect the people and yet promote things that actually destroy people.

Tim Barton: 24:06

Well, and they're so inconsistent, right, as they've promoted these electric vehicles without talking about where does the cobalt come from? Right? Who's mining the cobalt? And these child slaves are mining cobalt through electric cars. And then, by the way, how do we power those electric vehicles? Oh, you mean, when they get their electricity, they're being coal powered. So there's actually more fossil fuels being used on electric vehicles in this process of mining the cobalt and charging them than there would be in a normal vehicle.

Tim Barton: 24:36

But they don't care as much about what is true. What's consistent? Because, again, if they did, if they were actually honest, people that had integrity and they cared about saving the environment. What is the cleanest energy there? Is nuclear, and, as Phil points out, it's been 40 years, four decades, so it's any kind of licensing has been done for what would be the cleanest energy there is? And then, okay, what's the second cleanest?

Tim Barton: 24:58

These fossil fuels is natural gas. That they're directly opposing, and they want to stop giving natural gas to our allies at a time when Russia we consider Russia a major threat, which is why they're trying to fund Ukraine, and yet we're not going to give natural gas to nations that need natural gas and there are only other options to get it from Russia. Nothing about the Biden administration is making sense unless it's really about money and power, and then their decisions make way more sense. I think that's really what the battle is, but knowing some of the truth behind the fossil fuels or natural gas makes it a lot easier to push back in some of the nonsense by people that are trying to cancel some of these fossil fuels.

Rick Green: 25:37

Good stuff. Well, we appreciate Phil King joining us today. Thank you for listening and, once again, go to our website, wallbuilders. com Lots of great information there and really do encourage you to do exactly what Phil's been doing get you a Constitution Alive or Biblical Citizenship class going in your living room, just like he's doing, or at your church. Very easy to do. You can get all the materials there at WallBuilders. com or you can visit Constitutioncoach. com, and part of what he was talking about just the technology that makes it easy is our dashboard, and we've put a lot of time and energy and money into that. It's free for you to use as a coach and it really does make it easy to host a class. So hope you'll take advantage of that.

Rick Green: 26:12

Visit today, get signed up. There's no time to waste folks. We're at that point. We're at that point where we have this great window of opportunity where people are listening, they're paying attention, they're curious, they're hungry, they know the country is crumbling and they want to be part of saving it. They want to be part of picking up those pieces of rubble and rebuilding the walls, just like in Nehemiah. So you can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles by helping to lead the way right there in your community. Check it out today at constitutioncoach. com. We sure appreciate you're listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.