The Future Of Texas Could Be Determined By Colorado’s Courts

By Jason Isaac

Last year, the oil and gas industry paid for nearly $30 billion dollars of benefits across Texas that most people never stop to think about, from school funding to property tax relief to the roads and water systems that keep the state running. Next month, a lawsuit out of Boulder, Colorado could put all of that at risk. Having spent eight years in the Texas House representing the Hill Country, where I sat on the Energy Resources and Environmental Regulation committees, I have rarely seen a case with this much riding on it for ordinary Texans.

The case, Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, will be heard by the Supreme Court on Oct. 5. It centers on whether Colorado tort law can impose liability on American energy companies for the global effect of the world’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. News coverage has described the case as a legal battle between Big Oil and climate activists. But at its core, this is a fight over whether Boulder can set energy policy for Texas, and every other state.

Start with what the industry pays for in Texas, one of the most affordable states in the nation. Oil and gas activity generated roughly $27 billion in combined state and local taxes and royalties in 2025 alone. It directly employs more than 440,000 Texans at an average wage of $115,000, nearly double that of other private-sector jobs. In total, the energy supply chain employs more than 1.4 million Texans.

Oil and gas severance taxes, which energy companies are required to pay to the state whenever they extract or “sever” natural resources from the ground, filled Texas’ Economic Stabilization Fund to its constitutional cap last year, and the overflow now goes toward water infrastructure, broadband, and property tax relief. The Permanent School Fund and Permanent University Fund each received more than $2 billion in a single year from Texas energy. When people ask what oil and gas has done for Texas lately, that is the answer is “just about everything.” (RELATED: Climate Lawfare Rings In Monday’s Supreme Court Session)

Consider what Boulder’s lawsuit would put at risk. Texas crude production hit a record 1.73 billion barrels in 2024, and natural gas production hit a record 12.62 trillion cubic feet, achieved with 65 percent fewer active rigs than a decade ago. Those gains came from capital-intensive long-horizon bets on drilling efficiency, completions technology, and the pipelines that carry Permian gas to Gulf Coast LNG [liquified natural gas] terminals. Now, a company weighing whether to invest another billion dollars in Texas production has to price in the risk that any of the more than 90,000 local governments in this country, not just Boulder, could later sue over the same lawful product produced and sold today. That uncertainty shows up as a higher cost of capital, slower buildout, and fewer of the jobs and tax revenue Texans depend on.

Earlier this year, Texas joined 15 other states on an amicus brief warning that Boulder’s suit “threatens to let a single State’s judiciary set climate-change policy for other States,” subjecting energy companies to a patchwork of “vague and conflicting rules” nationwide and undermining what the brief calls the “coequal sovereignty of each State to regulate emissions within their respective borders.” Wyoming, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Louisiana all have the same stake Texas does.

If Boulder’s climate lawsuit survives, a wave of identical climate suits from dozens of other progressive jurisdictions will receive the green light to move forward. The impact of these suits on will not be confined to Colorado or the other suing jurisdictions. Instead, the economies of energy producing states like Texas will be destroyed and the affordability fight will be lost.

The question before the Supreme Court is not whether climate change is real. It’s whether a lone county in Colorado can write energy policy for states far away like Texas. After eight years watching what this industry builds across our state, I hope the justices make clear that Boulder, and every other out-of-state plaintiff, has no say in the future of Texas energy.

Jason Isaac is founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute and previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.