Report: Jerry Jones' Gas Company is 'Giddy' Over 'Hitting the Jackpot' with the Disaster in Texas. Unsurprisingly, Texans are Somewhat Displeased.
Pro Football Talk - Cowboys owner Jerry Jones owns a Frisco-based natural gas producer that is cashing in on a surge in prices for the fuel, Bloomberg reports.
The billionaire owns Comstock Resources Inc., which has sold gas from its Haynesville Shale wells in East Texas and northern Louisiana at premium prices the past week. Demand has led to gas prices at some regional hubs to soar past $1,000 per million British thermal units, according to Bloomberg.
“This week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices,” Chief Financial Officer Roland Burns said on an earnings call Wednesday, via Bloomberg. “Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production.”
That seems good news for Jones, who, two years ago, had a total investment of $1.1 billion in Comstock. His oil and gas company has become the leading producer in one of the nation’s largest natural gas basins.
I'm a big fan of capitalism. BIG, big fan. Despite what your college professors tell you about Marxism being a good theory, when a theory has a 0.0% success rate, it stops being a theory and starts being a wacky, childish bullshit fantasy. You can hold a cinderblock over a college professor's head and let go of it, and in theory, invisible pixies will keep it from caving his tenured skull in. But good luck getting him to agree to test your theory. By the same token, I'm a big fan of petroleum and the good people who find it, get it out of the ground, refine it, sell it and keep my lazy ass warm, showering in hot water and getting wherever it needs to go.
That said, if this is true, fuck Jerry Jones. Fuck Comstock Resources. Fuck his CFO Roland Burns. Fuck them for selling "at super premium prices" to a desperate people suffering by the millions in what is very much a survival situation.
Seriously, way to play a caricature of a cartoonish, evil, capitalist ubervillain. This is Montgomery Burns level shit. JR Ewing. The Dukes Brothers. Gordon Gekko, wrecking Blue Star Airlines just because it's wreckable. Goddamned Scrooge McDuck wouldn't cash in on a disaster like this, and he walks around freeballing under his coat. This is the kind of behavior that makes Marxism appealing to people in the first place. The sort of thing that will make headlines in Russia and China about the evils of America and the decadent West.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be turning a profit. But if they're gouging at time when people have icicles hanging from their ceiling fans and are dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from sleeping in their cars with the engines running to stay warm, there's not a hot enough place in Hell. Or cold enough. In Dante's "Divine Comedy," the inner circle of Hell is a frozen lake called Cocytus. In it, Judas is frozen with his eyes open for all eternity so he has to see what he is responsible for. If there's a word of truth to this story - that executives at Comstock are taking advantage and celebrating the windfall they're making in this - then Jerry Jones belongs in there with his nose stuck in Judas' butthole.
Times of crisis don't just build character, they reveal it. Some billionaires see them as an opportunity to step up and help.
Some see them just as an opportunity. Let's see which Jerruh is. Hehasn't responded yet. He has to. He owes the people of Texas nothing less.