Faulkner: Spending big bucks was the wrong strategy to defeat Denton frack ban

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Jake Dean

Chris Faulkner, CEO of Breitling Energy.

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Nicholas Sakelaris

Staff Writer- Dallas Business Journal

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Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Denton was the wrong strategy to defeat the fracking ban, Chris Faulkner, the CEO of Breitling Energy, told me in a phone interview Wednesday.

"It's not about spending money. It's about putting in effort," he said. "It makes you look worse. They could do a lot more with less."

The Denton frack ban passed by 58 percent of the vote on Nov. 4, the first such ban to pass in Texas.

XTO Energy, Devon Energy, EnerVest, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum contributed at least $680,000 to the political action group opposing the fracking ban, according to the latest expense reports. The total amount contributed could be even higher when final expense reports come out. The money paid for a slick advertising campaign that included prime-time television advertisements.

On the other side, supporters of the fracking ban went door-to-door and hit the social media networks hard to get their message across. They raised far less, about $75,000, with about half of that coming from Earthworks, a Washington D.C.-based environmental activist group.

"I hope it's a wake-up call that this is not the way you handle earning the social license," said Faulkner, an outspoken advocate for fracking. "Now the attorneys show up and everybody gets sued and it's ridiculous."

Within hours of the fracking ban passing, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and the Texas Oil and Gas Association both filed legal challenges to the fracking ban. Both are trying to block its enforcement before it goes into effect Dec. 2.

Just as Faulkner predicted before the election, the implications of the ban spread far beyond Denton, especially because the election happened in Texas.

Nicholas covers the energy, manufacturing, aviation and transportation beats for the Dallas Business Journal. Subscribe the Energy Inc. newsletter