The Best Idea you will hear this Election Year in Oklahoma

Education should be our number one priority. When you are 50^th, or 47^th, or whatever low ranking we are this month, you have nowhere to go but up.

For too long, we haven’t gone anywhere. Our funding per student is very low compared to just about any state not named New Mexico. We have underpaid teachers, smart students who need more options to excel, and school buildings that need updating. But most importantly, we need a Legislature to want to fix our bottom 5 rankings. Nobody wants higher income taxes, but nobody wants their local school to close and consolidate with another school just to make ends meet.

So if we can’t raise taxes to create more school funding, what do we do?

STEP 1: We look on the other side of the accounting ledger. Forget increasing funding for this exercise. Think lowering operating expenses.

Heating costs for various buildings on a school campus are high; and just like anywhere else there are big rooms with high ceilings and cracks in the walls, doors and around windows. Sealing these ancient leaks can help a lot. But I have a bigger idea.

STEP 2: Oklahoma is a historically important oil and gas state. We have thousands and thousands of oil wells, gas wells, pipelines, and production equipment within a stone’s throw of many cities and towns in Oklahoma. Many of these wells are shut in for various reasons. Some are old wells that are depleted and have much lower flow than they had in the first decade of production, but are still capable of producing hydrocarbons. Some wells are low-pressure wells that would cost a fortune to compress the gas enough to get into the nearby high-pressure gas transport pipeline. I have had a gas well that was shut in much of the time because the monthly revenue barely covered the compression costs, so we only brought in the compressor during winter months when the sale price was higher. So how can a shut-in gas well help a school’s bottom line and put more money into the students and teachers, and less into the local gas utility’s coffers?

HOW ABOUT we hook up some of these shut-in, low-pressure gas wells into the local city gas utility pipeline and allow that gas to be used by the school at no cost? The well was shut in anyway, and the operator could earn a tax credit for themselves and their royalty owners under said well by maintaining  the well and allowing it to be used by the local school. A shut-in well often has to pay shut-in rentals to the royalty owners, so the operator and other well owners weren’t making any money on the well anyway. Now, the school gets free gas, the well owners get a tax credit, and a high percentage of the school’s operating costs disappear due to no longer paying a natural gas bill for heating and other uses.

There will need to be a lot of research into gas availability, pipeline usage, risk and safety factors, and likely new legislation to approve this usage of gas, and the creation of a special tax credit for the working interest and royalty interest owners so they can see some benefit of their ownership, but this is a win-win all the way around.

There are wells, both producing and shut-in, nearby or in many of our cities and towns. There are also existing pipelines feeding natural gas to the school, so no new construction needed in many cases. And what better use for natural gas that is too low pressure to be compressed and put into higher pressure lines, than to allow it to be used locally, for the benefit of the school, the community and the State?

Back in the 1980s, I helped my old high school in Haskell County drill their own gas well over Christmas break. That well provided natural gas to the school for many decades; I believe the well still produces today. It paid for itself in just a little more than one year. Now we don’t need to have schools drill their own wells for this benefit; there are many wells out there that can serve this purpose.

And what a great thing to brag about in Oklahoma! An oil and gas state using our energy resources to directly power a school system! Which in turn, opens up those dollars that used to pay the expensive heating bills and reroutes them to hire more teachers, provide more benefits to students, and even fix the leaks. I am willing to do the grunt work and find schools and well operators who would be willing to be a part of a pilot program to see how this would work on a local level. If everything goes well, this could be expanded all over Oklahoma. Education would have more dollars per student, increasing our ranking as we expand this program. Old wells would have new life. Operators could maintain the well (as part of their tax credit), and Energy and Education would be working hand in hand to new success.

One more thing: none of this would involve increasing income tax on anyone, anywhere.

If I win a seat in the Legislature after the November 3^rd election, I will make this a priority.

Help me get there. I appreciate your support for this project and your vote in November.