Post by Ethan / JRyan on Sept 13, 2018 18:36:03 GMT -5
An older article from the same person for comparison....
Ex-state official Victor Carrillo leads religious oil outfit
metro-state
By Asher Price - American-Statesman Staff
...
Posted: 12:49 p.m. Friday, May 13, 2016
When Republican primary voters rejected his re-election bid in 2010, Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo blamed his defeat on a “built-in bias” over his Hispanic surname.
Today, Carrillo sees a different force at work. “It was a God-directed thing,” he said. “I’m here for a purpose.”
“Here” is the Dallas-based Zion Oil and Gas, which focuses its exploration efforts on Israel in hopes of finding more than profit.
Zion’s ultimate purpose is to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ. Citing Genesis and Deuteronomy and biblical promises of treasure buried deep, Carrillo and other Zion officials say discovering oil in Israel would be another sign of the imminent return of the Christian Messiah.
Carrillo, 51, who earned a master’s degree in geology before putting himself through law school, said his job as Zion’s chief executive officer is to “bring the geology that informs the theology.”
“We make our plans for how and where to drill, but ultimately, the outcome, that’s in God’s hands,” Carrillo said.
Despite the weight of biblical imperative, Carrillo and Zion also face the unavoidable reality that, while smaller oil fields have been found, no especially rich deposits have been discovered in the Promised Land.
“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses,” the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir reportedly joked. “He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”
That hasn’t stopped the faithful from trying.
Calling on a passage that promises “blessings of the deep” and on a hopscotch of geographic clues dotting the Bible, Zion is the latest in a series of companies and individuals that have enticed investors with the promise of biblically oriented oil profits.
Historically, most such pitches have hit dead ends.
A little over a decade ago, for example, Harold “Hayseed” Stephens, who followed a brief professional football career with running a church near Dallas, told an evangelical radio show that experts had determined that billions of barrels of oil were lurking beneath Israel’s rocky soil.
“You cannot find such good odds in Vegas, Atlantic City or anywhere else in the world, even if you are nothing but a gambler,” he told them, according to an article in Mother Jones magazine.
The company Stephens oversaw, however, has not had a significant discovery.
‘The Vision and the Calling’
Zion, which has focused exclusively on drilling in Israel, also has worked to inspire the biblically minded to invest — raising money through stock offerings to pay salaries, office leases and drilling costs.
Its founder, John Brown, calls himself a Christian Zionist, or one who believes that establishing the state of Israel was a prerequisite for the return of Christ.
Once a manufacturing executive in Michigan and a self-described alcoholic, Brown had a religious awakening in the early 1980s and moved to Texas, determined to start an oil company, after hearing a sermon suggesting that the Bible revealed a massive oil field lies beneath Israel. After losing so much of his savings that he resorted to cleaning toilets at his Baptist church, he founded Zion in 2000.
“This is a faith company, created by faith, created by God,” Brown, who remains chairman of the board, said in a promotional video for Zion.
Keeping with the Jewish tradition of not destroying and discarding the name of God, Zion’s emails often spell it as “G-d” — in case those emails are ever printed out.
In missives posted on Zion’s website with titles like “The Vision and the Calling,” Brown says he wants to “render assistance” to Israel and ready the land for the return of the Messiah “by providing the oil and gas necessary to help the people of Israel maintain their political and economic independence.”
“Zion’s management team sees the state of Israel not only as a refuge of Jews but also as the fulfillment of prophecy,” an announcer intones in one of the company’s promotional videos.
The company went public in 2007, raising more than $12 million in its initial public offering. Since then, Zion has burned through at least $100 million in unsuccessful efforts to discover oil; it’s now trading at less than $2 a share, down at least 75 percent from its five-year high.
After attending law school at nights while working as an Amoco production geologist, Carrillo won elections to the Abilene City Council and as Taylor County judge before then-Gov. Rick Perry appointed him in 2003 to the Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry.
Handpicked by Brown, Carrillo joined Zion as president and chief operating officer in 2011.
He became Zion’s chief executive in June, embarking on what might be his toughest assignment yet, shepherding nearly 30 employees toward greater glory in a land better known for its dates and olives.
“Can we guarantee success? Absolutely not. All oil and gas projects are risky,” Carrillo said. “But there’s a good likelihood everything will come together on a biblical basis.
Crude — or olive oil?
Zion was initially inspired to drill in northwest Israel, near the territory of the ancient tribe of Asher, because of a blessing reportedly bestowed by Moses: “Most blessed of sons be Asher; let him be the favorite of his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil.”
Some Bible experts suspect the phrase has more to do with olive oil than crude.
In any case, Zion has recently reworked its drilling strategy, deciding that it had confused some biblical language in identifying potentially oil-rich areas. It will soon begin drilling to the east, south of the Sea of Galilee.
“We all believe that in Genesis, God imparted blessings on the people of Israel and on the land,” Carrillo said. “Those blessings include petroleum and natural gas. My role is to help the company find where do we punch the specific holes in the ground to find, in the biblical language, the ‘treasures of the deep.’ ”
The company has taken heart from the discovery, announced in 2010 by Houston-based Noble Energy, of a massive natural gas field off of Israel’s shores.
Carrillo joined Zion as an unpaid board member in 2010, when he was still regulating the oil and gas industry as chairman of the Railroad Commission
Ian Steusloff, general counsel of the Texas Ethics Commission, said nothing in Texas law specifically bars a state officer from serving on the board of an entity he or she regulates.
But Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics, said such an arrangement would “rise to a conflict of interest in the minds of many.”
Carrillo said he was advised by his chief of staff that nothing precluded him from taking an unpaid board position of a company he regulated. Carrillo was given a paid position soon after leaving office and last year earned about $450,000 in salary and benefits from Zion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings; his former chief of staff is now a board member at the company.
As part of his goal to merge geology and theology, Carrillo hired Lee Russell, a geologist who applied for a job at Zion after his wife heard the company mentioned on the broadcast ministry American Family Radio.
“What drives me is what the geology tells me,” said Russell, who previously worked for Shell and Arco and said Zion engages in conventional methods of exploration, including fieldwork, geological mapping and seismic data reviews.
“Nobody just sits paging through the Bible looking for hints as to where we ought to go,” Russell said. But, he added, “It’s been pretty interesting that what geology tells me is not in conflict with what John’s biblical vision is.”
Asked about coming up dry thus far — the company has drilled at least four exploratory wells, according to 2015 filings with the SEC; none has produced oil or gas in commercial quantities — Carrillo uses the logic of the seasoned oilman: “It’s just like any area of the world. Until that first successful oil well is penetrated, there’s nothing out there.”
Last December, the man who defeated Carrillo in the 2010 primary, David Porter, announced he would not seek re-election to the Railroad Commission. Carrillo said he was briefly tempted to return to politics.
“Of course I love serving the people of Texas and advancing a pro-growth, pro-energy type of philosophy,” Carrillo said. “But my main motivation would have been to see if I had the capacity to be elected statewide again. I’ve progressed faithwise since then, and that’s not the proper motivation to seek statewide office.”
Zion, he said, “has allowed me to serve my faith and background in one job.”
metro-state
By Asher Price - American-Statesman Staff
...
Posted: 12:49 p.m. Friday, May 13, 2016
When Republican primary voters rejected his re-election bid in 2010, Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo blamed his defeat on a “built-in bias” over his Hispanic surname.
Today, Carrillo sees a different force at work. “It was a God-directed thing,” he said. “I’m here for a purpose.”
“Here” is the Dallas-based Zion Oil and Gas, which focuses its exploration efforts on Israel in hopes of finding more than profit.
Zion’s ultimate purpose is to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ. Citing Genesis and Deuteronomy and biblical promises of treasure buried deep, Carrillo and other Zion officials say discovering oil in Israel would be another sign of the imminent return of the Christian Messiah.
Carrillo, 51, who earned a master’s degree in geology before putting himself through law school, said his job as Zion’s chief executive officer is to “bring the geology that informs the theology.”
“We make our plans for how and where to drill, but ultimately, the outcome, that’s in God’s hands,” Carrillo said.
Despite the weight of biblical imperative, Carrillo and Zion also face the unavoidable reality that, while smaller oil fields have been found, no especially rich deposits have been discovered in the Promised Land.
“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses,” the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir reportedly joked. “He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”
That hasn’t stopped the faithful from trying.
Calling on a passage that promises “blessings of the deep” and on a hopscotch of geographic clues dotting the Bible, Zion is the latest in a series of companies and individuals that have enticed investors with the promise of biblically oriented oil profits.
Historically, most such pitches have hit dead ends.
A little over a decade ago, for example, Harold “Hayseed” Stephens, who followed a brief professional football career with running a church near Dallas, told an evangelical radio show that experts had determined that billions of barrels of oil were lurking beneath Israel’s rocky soil.
“You cannot find such good odds in Vegas, Atlantic City or anywhere else in the world, even if you are nothing but a gambler,” he told them, according to an article in Mother Jones magazine.
The company Stephens oversaw, however, has not had a significant discovery.
‘The Vision and the Calling’
Zion, which has focused exclusively on drilling in Israel, also has worked to inspire the biblically minded to invest — raising money through stock offerings to pay salaries, office leases and drilling costs.
Its founder, John Brown, calls himself a Christian Zionist, or one who believes that establishing the state of Israel was a prerequisite for the return of Christ.
Once a manufacturing executive in Michigan and a self-described alcoholic, Brown had a religious awakening in the early 1980s and moved to Texas, determined to start an oil company, after hearing a sermon suggesting that the Bible revealed a massive oil field lies beneath Israel. After losing so much of his savings that he resorted to cleaning toilets at his Baptist church, he founded Zion in 2000.
“This is a faith company, created by faith, created by God,” Brown, who remains chairman of the board, said in a promotional video for Zion.
Keeping with the Jewish tradition of not destroying and discarding the name of God, Zion’s emails often spell it as “G-d” — in case those emails are ever printed out.
In missives posted on Zion’s website with titles like “The Vision and the Calling,” Brown says he wants to “render assistance” to Israel and ready the land for the return of the Messiah “by providing the oil and gas necessary to help the people of Israel maintain their political and economic independence.”
“Zion’s management team sees the state of Israel not only as a refuge of Jews but also as the fulfillment of prophecy,” an announcer intones in one of the company’s promotional videos.
The company went public in 2007, raising more than $12 million in its initial public offering. Since then, Zion has burned through at least $100 million in unsuccessful efforts to discover oil; it’s now trading at less than $2 a share, down at least 75 percent from its five-year high.
After attending law school at nights while working as an Amoco production geologist, Carrillo won elections to the Abilene City Council and as Taylor County judge before then-Gov. Rick Perry appointed him in 2003 to the Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry.
Handpicked by Brown, Carrillo joined Zion as president and chief operating officer in 2011.
He became Zion’s chief executive in June, embarking on what might be his toughest assignment yet, shepherding nearly 30 employees toward greater glory in a land better known for its dates and olives.
“Can we guarantee success? Absolutely not. All oil and gas projects are risky,” Carrillo said. “But there’s a good likelihood everything will come together on a biblical basis.
Crude — or olive oil?
Zion was initially inspired to drill in northwest Israel, near the territory of the ancient tribe of Asher, because of a blessing reportedly bestowed by Moses: “Most blessed of sons be Asher; let him be the favorite of his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil.”
Some Bible experts suspect the phrase has more to do with olive oil than crude.
In any case, Zion has recently reworked its drilling strategy, deciding that it had confused some biblical language in identifying potentially oil-rich areas. It will soon begin drilling to the east, south of the Sea of Galilee.
“We all believe that in Genesis, God imparted blessings on the people of Israel and on the land,” Carrillo said. “Those blessings include petroleum and natural gas. My role is to help the company find where do we punch the specific holes in the ground to find, in the biblical language, the ‘treasures of the deep.’ ”
The company has taken heart from the discovery, announced in 2010 by Houston-based Noble Energy, of a massive natural gas field off of Israel’s shores.
Carrillo joined Zion as an unpaid board member in 2010, when he was still regulating the oil and gas industry as chairman of the Railroad Commission
Ian Steusloff, general counsel of the Texas Ethics Commission, said nothing in Texas law specifically bars a state officer from serving on the board of an entity he or she regulates.
But Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics, said such an arrangement would “rise to a conflict of interest in the minds of many.”
Carrillo said he was advised by his chief of staff that nothing precluded him from taking an unpaid board position of a company he regulated. Carrillo was given a paid position soon after leaving office and last year earned about $450,000 in salary and benefits from Zion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings; his former chief of staff is now a board member at the company.
As part of his goal to merge geology and theology, Carrillo hired Lee Russell, a geologist who applied for a job at Zion after his wife heard the company mentioned on the broadcast ministry American Family Radio.
“What drives me is what the geology tells me,” said Russell, who previously worked for Shell and Arco and said Zion engages in conventional methods of exploration, including fieldwork, geological mapping and seismic data reviews.
“Nobody just sits paging through the Bible looking for hints as to where we ought to go,” Russell said. But, he added, “It’s been pretty interesting that what geology tells me is not in conflict with what John’s biblical vision is.”
Asked about coming up dry thus far — the company has drilled at least four exploratory wells, according to 2015 filings with the SEC; none has produced oil or gas in commercial quantities — Carrillo uses the logic of the seasoned oilman: “It’s just like any area of the world. Until that first successful oil well is penetrated, there’s nothing out there.”
Last December, the man who defeated Carrillo in the 2010 primary, David Porter, announced he would not seek re-election to the Railroad Commission. Carrillo said he was briefly tempted to return to politics.
“Of course I love serving the people of Texas and advancing a pro-growth, pro-energy type of philosophy,” Carrillo said. “But my main motivation would have been to see if I had the capacity to be elected statewide again. I’ve progressed faithwise since then, and that’s not the proper motivation to seek statewide office.”
Zion, he said, “has allowed me to serve my faith and background in one job.”