Legendary oilman George Mitchell’s foundation keeps his iconoclastic spirit alive
Pumpjacks operate next to large wind turbines Friday, July 8, 2022, near Midland.
Source: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle
Legendary oilman George Mitchell defied conventional wisdom and revolutionized Texas’s oil and gas industry decades ago with shale drilling. Today, his philanthropic foundation plans another insurgency, transforming oilpatch workers into climate change warriors.
The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, led by Executive Vice President Marilu Hastings, will launch a new program Thursday to develop the advanced energy industry in the Permian Basin. Hastings, who has deep roots in West Texas and energy, says it will continue the Mitchells’ desire to keep Texas on the cutting edge of energy and sustainability.
“There’s a lot of philanthropy funding climate efforts, funding climate equity, all of the necessary and urgent things that we need to be doing as a society, but are we actually thinking about what that looks like in 20 or 30 years?” Hastings asked me. “What does it mean for communities in an energy-intensive region?”
For almost a decade, I’ve called on the Texas industry to evolve and lead the transition to low-carbon energy. For even longer, Hastings and the Mitchell Foundation have delivered change.
Environmentalists might see the Galveston-born Mitchell as a walking contradiction. As a petroleum engineer who founded Mitchell Energy and developed 10,000 wells, it’s easy to see the pioneer of hydraulic fracturing as a climate change villain.
Like many oil wildcatters, Mitchell loved the outdoors and committed himself to sustainability. He developed The Woodlands, north of Houston, as an environmentally-friendly community of 115,000 people that Niche.com recently named the best place in the U.S. to buy a house, and second-best place to raise a family.
“A big part of the Mitchell legacy is that drive to pursue the next solution, the next thing that needs to happen, or that is possible, sometimes despite a lot of criticism,” Hastings said. “He had an equal drive to develop next-generation thinking on what we call sustainability, which is the focus of the foundation.”
Two years ago, the foundation launched the Respect Big Bend project, bringing together environmentalists, developers, residents and academics to devise strategies to protect West Texas while allowing new fossil fuel and renewable energy projects. Academics brought people together to map out what places needed protecting and which were suitable for energy development.
On Thursday, Hastings will launch the Permian Energy Development Lab, which will help transform the Texas energy workforce as the world demands more energy and lower emissions to slow climate change. The coalition will unite seven colleges and universities, two national laboratories and regional energy companies in developing workers and business plans that take advantage of the clean energy transition.
Energy and sustainability are not mutually exclusive; our future depends on both.
