FortBendNow.com

In retrospect, it’s difficult to imagine that any institution could live up to the marketing hype that emerged along with the Texas Energy Center in 2003.

“Modeled along the lines of the Texas Medical Center, the Texas Energy Center will foster cooperative efforts between industry, universities, research centers, as well as the government to increase the energy supply, promote energy independence, realize cleaner energy sources and contribute to the next generation workforce,” said Dr. Raymond Flumerfelt, dean of the University of Houston’s Cullen College, where brainstorming for the TEC began.

“The TEC will stimulate tremendous job growth for the area, creating an estimated $217 million in local tax revenue,” members of Fort Bend County Commissioners Court said in a statement accompanying the county’s 2004 budget.

“It will include a multi-institutional approach including the University of Houston, Wharton Community Junior College, an energy information intelligence system, public policy and business analysis institutions,” the Greater Fort Bend Economic Council said in its 2002-2003 annual report. “The center is destined to become a new economic driver for the region and the state. It is headed up and inspired by its architect – Ron Oligney.”

Oligney director of engineering research development at Cullen College before he became the TEC’s first – and last – director, didn’t return phone calls for comment on this article. But he added his own touch to the TEC marketing message, through a series of articles and presentations.

“The Texas Energy Center’s mission of leadership in energy innovation and the isolated ERCOT grid make Texas the ideal location to develop and test the Smart Grid of the Future for the nation,” he and colleagues Paul Chu and Rick Smalley said in a white paper.

And in Power Point presentations to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Economic Development and Tourism Division, Oligney and TEC staffers maintained:

→ The “spin-off effect” from TEC efforts would attract $2.1 billion in research and development money to Texas within seven years.

→ Texas companies would create a new deepwater oil drilling industry that doubles U.S. daily production and creates 200,000 new jobs.

→ TEC “activity” would nearly double federal research and development spending in Texas, adding $450 million to the existing $460 million in research now being conducted in the state.

Oligney and TEC officials petitioned the governor’s office for $6.1 million in state funding to start the TEC. In return, they said:

→ “TEC will secure Texas’s position as a world leader in new energy technology.”

→ “TEC will help Texas expand its corporate base of energy companies and will secure Texas as the nation’s top location for energy research.”

→ “Activities at the TEC will help the U.S. transition into cleaner, more sustainable energy, decrease U.S. reliance on foreign energy sources and increase the nation’s security.”

The Texas economic impact of a federal deepwater oil drilling research program would be “bigger than Toyota,” TEC officials said in 2003, creating “a new $15 billion industry for Texas with “50,000 to 100,000 more jobs in 10-15 years.”

“The TEC should create $2.1 billion in payroll in Texas in the next 10 years; produce $38 million in state sales tax revenue,” the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court budget statement said, adding, “In time, the results of the research will likely provide new sources of power for the entire world.”