Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): $445,000 From Oil & Gas Donors in 2024, 0% Environmental Voting Score in 2025

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) received at least $445,232 in oil and gas industry campaign contributions during the 2024 election cycle — ranking him among the top five federal recipients of fossil fuel money that year — and then voted in favor of legislation that directly benefited those same donors: blocking a methane pollution fee for a decade, cutting clean energy tax credits, and advancing bills to open offshore drilling on 625 million federally protected acres.

The Donors: Consistent Industry Support

According to OpenSecrets data cited by Capital and Main, Cruz ranked fifth among all federal candidates in oil and gas industry contributions during the 2024 election cycle, receiving $445,232. Including contributions to the Ted Cruz Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee, Yale Climate Connections reported the oil and gas industry gave “more than $900,000 to Cruz’s campaign during the 2024 election cycle.” The largest single contributor to the Victory Fund was Veritas Energy, at $219,200, according to OpenSecrets.

The industry’s financial relationship with Cruz predates his 2024 re-election campaign. In the 2020 cycle — a year when Cruz was not on the ballot — Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Gizmodo show he still collected $14,000 from Chevron’s political action committee and $10,000 from Exxon Mobil’s, plus tens of thousands more in individual contributions from employees of 30 oil and gas companies.

Cruz chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has direct jurisdiction over energy infrastructure, pipeline safety, and energy transport — placing him in a position to shape policy that directly governs the same industry funding his campaigns.

The Votes: 0% Environmental Score in Two Consecutive Years

The League of Conservation Voters tracks congressional environmental voting and has given Cruz a lifetime score of 3%, meaning he has voted in favor of pro-environment legislation in roughly six out of every two hundred tracked votes across his Senate career. He received a 0% score in both 2024 and 2025.

In 2025 alone, the LCV recorded Cruz voting against all 34 pro-environment measures it tracked, including:

Opposing limits on methane pollution fees from oil and gas operations
Voting to eliminate wind and solar energy tax credits
Supporting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Voting to block federal clean vehicle emission standards
Voting to confirm cabinet officials who subsequently rolled back Clean Air Act protections

On July 1, 2025, Cruz voted in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025. The law included two provisions that directly benefited oil and gas producers:

Methane fee delay. The law postponed an existing fee on methane emissions from oil and gas operations by a full decade — from its scheduled 2024 start date to 2034. The fee had been set at $900 per ton of methane in 2024, rising to $1,200 in 2025 and $1,500 in 2026. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the delay will cost taxpayers a projected $7.2 billion in revenue over the coming decade. The same law also rescinded unobligated funding from the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, which had been appropriated to help industry prepare for the fee — meaning taxpayers subsidized that preparation and then the obligation was eliminated.

Clean energy credit rollbacks. The law curtailed or eliminated the majority of clean energy tax credits established by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, placing tight timelines on wind and solar investments and phasing out provisions that had supported manufacturing and household energy efficiency upgrades.

Legislation Introduced on Behalf of the Industry

Beyond his voting record, Cruz introduced two additional bills in 2025 that would directly benefit oil and gas producers:

January 17, 2025: Cruz introduced legislation to repeal President Biden’s executive order designating over 625 million acres of federal offshore territory as off-limits to oil and gas exploration. The protected areas covered the East and West Coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and parts of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.

October 27, 2025: Cruz introduced the Natural Gas Export Expansion Act, which would expedite federal approval for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports by treating applications to ship gas to non-free-trade-agreement countries with the same accelerated process reserved for free-trade partners. Cruz first introduced versions of this bill in 2021 and 2023 and reintroduced it again in 2025.

What This Costs Constituents

Analysis from Evergreen Action projects that the One Big Beautiful Bill’s clean energy credit rollbacks could raise average household electricity bills by $140 to $220 per year by 2040, with some states facing increases exceeding $500 annually. The rollbacks also threaten up to 100,000 full-time jobs in clean energy manufacturing by 2040 and put at risk $522 billion in announced private investments in American clean energy production — much of it in Republican-represented congressional districts.

Texas provides an additional frame. During Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, the worst energy infrastructure failure in state history left more than 4.5 million homes and businesses without power and killed at least 246 people. Federal investigators determined that failures in natural gas wells and pipeline compressor stations — which froze in extreme cold — accounted for more than five times the power loss caused by wind turbines. State oil and gas inspectors had not been adequately enforcing winterization requirements on natural gas operators. During the storm, Cruz flew his family to Cancun, Mexico, returning only after photographs of his departure became public.

The methane fee Cruz helped delay for a decade specifically targets the same natural gas operators whose weatherization failures contributed to the Uri disaster.

What You Can Do

Ted Cruz won re-election in November 2024 and is serving a term through January 2031. He will continue to chair the Senate Commerce Committee and shape energy and infrastructure legislation throughout that period.