Critics are criticizing the billionaire Dallas Cowboys owner for “hitting the jackpot” with his natural gas prices amid a record-breaking winter storm that left Texans shaking – and dying – without heat and electricity.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is the majority shareholder in Comstock Resources Inc., a shale drill operating in Texas and Louisiana. Investors shouted in a conference call about rising fuel prices, spurred by rising demand in the icy south.
“This week is like winning big with some of these incredible prices,” said Comstock President and Chief Financial Officer Roland Burns in Wednesday’s conference call, Bloomberg said. “Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a significant amount of production.”
This revelation struck many as, at the very least, insensitive.
Jones is “doing what he’s always done: trying to profit,” grumbled Sports Illustrated writer Michael Rosenberg.
Jones was happy to receive a $ 325 million grant from the contributor to the AT&T stadium that hosts his team, Rosenberg noted. “Now you see how Jones is treating Texans in times of need. We can call that betrayal. “
“It is impossible to get a fair deal when one party is in it for the love and the other part for the money,” added Rosenberg. “If all of the clothes suddenly disappeared from the state, Jones would start selling Cowboy sweatshirts for $ 1,000 each.”
Robert Reich, who was secretary of labor for President Bill Clinton, noted that “billionaires profiting from human suffering is a feature, not a bug, of our defrauded system.”
Comstock had already increased production in anticipation of rising natural gas prices. It is now reaching “superpremium prices” of up to $ 179 per thousand cubic feet. The same natural gas in the last quarter was being sold by a $ 2.40 average per thousand cubic feet, reported the National Public Radio.
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