Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton has sent a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Broiullette, proposing options that he believes could help stabilize the U.S. energy economy and help the Trump administration to balance the oil market.

In the April 6 letter, Sitton said that the Texas Railroad Commission plays a role in determining how much oil is produced in the state.

“Very few people know that the Texas Railroad Commission has the ability to limit how much oil gets produced in our state, if the production of that oil would constitute waste based on market conditions,” said Sitton in the letter. “Today Texas is producing about 5 millions barrels of oil per day. And sometime in the very near future a large percentage of that oil will have nowhere to go. If Texas cut its production by 20  percent and pulled 1 million barrels per day off the market, and other states around the country also prorated, we could be part of an international response to the most unbalanced oil market the world has ever seen.”

He suggests three options the United States could take:

1) Do nothing and hope that America’s energy industry survives.

2) Utilize a stick approach where foreign crude oils are boycotted, embargoed or subject to tariffs, thus risking further combative relationships with other energy nations.

3) Participate in an international response to restrain production with countries "that we are historically fiercely competitive with, but [now] we recognize that this global pandemic, the likes of which the world has not seen in 100 years, requires previously unimaginable levels of cooperation with countries that are not necessarily our allies."

Sitton calls the third option the “approach most likely to benefit the people of the United States."

“As I have listened to the discussion surrounding how the United States could participate in a global agreement to restrain production, no one has pointed out that states utilizing existing statutory authority to balance the market is the simplest way to do it," he wrote to Broiulette. "I wanted you to be aware of my thoughts and know that you can rely on me if the administration is interested in executing a state-by-state approach to reducing U.S. production, in order to lead the world in stabilizing our primary energy supplies.”