Congressional Candidate Pfluger Takes Congressman Dan Crenshaw to the Oil Field

MIDLAND, TX — Republican congressional candidate for Texas’ 11th Congressional District August Pfluger hosted Congressman Dan Crenshaw on a tour of an oil drilling platform near Midland last week.

Pfluger, who faces Democrat Jon Mark Hogg of San Angelo in the November election, said he has been busy building bridges to other like-minded congressional leaders. Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal, and fighter pilot Pfluger hit it off immediately, Pfluger said.

“I am selling three issues that are important to CD-11,” Pfluger said. “National security, oil and gas, and agriculture,” he said. Pfluger is expected to win the November election handily so these visits are setting the stage for his service to the district that voted overwhelmingly Republican in 2016. Earlier this month, Pfluger was among the local leaders invited to accompany President Donald Trump during his campaign stop in Midland.

“It’s not about the post office, it’s all about oil and gas and ag,” quipped Pfluger. The Democrat-led U.S. House was called back into session this month to grapple with what Pfluger and outgoing CD-11 Congressman Mike Conaway claimed is a manufactured crisis.

“This is about building support for our district,” Pfluger said.

Pfluger said he and Crenshaw viewed the operations at the Diamondback rig in north Midland County as akin to a military tasking order. Every worker on the platform has a responsibility for a specific task and has to be coordinated. “The well was 9,000 feet deep and then turned 90 degrees to travel another 2.5 miles laterally, Pfluger said.

“I think Dan was impressed with how difficult and technical fracking was,” Pfluger said. Crenshaw is not a stranger to the oil and gas industry. His father worked in the industry where Crenshaw lived in a variety of foreign countries and he learned to speak Spanish fluently. Pfluger showed him how smaller operators like Diamondback are transforming the oil and gas industry.

“Seventy percent of the growth in U.S. oil and gas production has originated from the Permian Basin,” Pfluger said. That production has led to the U.S. becoming energy independent and that is a win for national security, he said.