Should Texas Build More Nuclear Power Plants?
State leaders are bullish on new atom-splitting technologies, even as those same officials hobble wind and solar projects.
Loren Steffy has been a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly since 2013. In 2020, he founded Stoney Creek Publishing Group, an independent publisher that focuses on Texas narratives. He is also an executive producer for Rational Middle Media and a managing director for 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint.
Steffy is the author of five nonfiction books: Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades (with Stan Marek); The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens (with Chrysta Castañeda); George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet; The Man Who Thought Like a Ship; and Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit. His first novel, The Big Empty, was published in May 2021.
He is the writer and producer of the six-episode narrative podcast Putin’s Oil Heist, and he was cohost of the award-winning Trial of the Century podcast with Tom Fox in 2021.
Steffy is a former business columnist for the Houston Chronicle and previously was the Texas bureau chief and a senior writer for Bloomberg News. His award-winning writing has been published in newspapers and other publications worldwide. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M. If he’s not writing or reading, he’s probably working on cars or puttering (yes, he has reached the age of puttering) around his property in Wimberley, where he lives with his wife, three dogs, and an ungrateful cat.
State leaders are bullish on new atom-splitting technologies, even as those same officials hobble wind and solar projects.
By Loren Steffy
Now that right-wingers have forced out a top-notch journalist at my alma mater, I worry that future students won't enjoy the same opportunities I did.
By Loren Steffy
Even when interest rates are high, people want a place where they can hunt actual bucks.
By Loren Steffy
NET Power says it can deliver zero-emission electricity to the Texas grid, but is its sustainable-energy business sustainable?
By Loren Steffy
The state’s shale fields are quiet, keeping supply tight and energy bills higher.
By Loren Steffy
Our electric system can’t deliver the power we need when we need it most. But political leaders don't seem all that interested in fixing the problem.
By Loren Steffy
The much-maligned—now bankrupt and outlawed—electricity provider offered just the sort of experiment Texas’s energy deregulation sought.
By Loren Steffy
Public Utility Commission chairman Arthur D’Andrea apologized to investors last week for the “uncertainty” around its profits.
By Loren Steffy
The bankruptcies and staggering electricity charges are beginning to arrive. Could it go from bad to worse?
By Loren Steffy
There’s plenty that needs fixing to avoid another electricity disaster, but our isolated grid isn’t the problem.
By Loren Steffy
The new president’s energy-related executive actions have stirred opposition in Texas and other oil-producing states. But Biden’s moves are dwarfed by the larger forces that have battered, and will transform, the industry.
By Loren Steffy
As other major oil companies have invested in renewable energy, the Irving-based producer has stubbornly stayed the course.
By Loren Steffy
Producers, who failed to anticipate how quickly storage would fill up this month, are now scrambling to turn off the taps—at least those who can.
By Loren Steffy
You didn’t have to be a fortune teller or an economist to know that unemployment claims were going to spike.
By Loren Steffy
When his Houston-based company was on the ropes, George Mitchell pushed his engineers to resuscitate a declining North Texas gas field. The solution they came up with transformed the world.
By Loren Steffy
The Dallas oilman and corporate raider's long, complicated history as an aw-shucks billionaire.
By Loren Steffy
‘Wall Street Journal’ reporter Russell Gold’s new book, ‘Superpower,’ crafts an engaging narrative of one man’s quest to modernize the American energy business.
By Loren Steffy
Michael Dell has transformed the stodgy computer manufacturer that bears his name into a nimble data-management outfit. He’s hoping that's enough to bring the pride of Round Rock back to its former glory.
By Loren Steffy
The Southwest Airlines cofounder was a pioneering entrepreneur who changed the way we travel. He was also a world-class wit, a bon vivant, and a not-so-closet intellectual.
By Loren Steffy
Welcome to the Permian Basin, home of the hottest oil play in the world.
By Loren Steffy
The Dallas executive is trying to make sure the 139-year-old company sticks around for another 139 years.
By Loren Steffy
The entrepreneur and financier confronts mortality in the most Texan of ways: by putting his beloved ranch on the market.
By Loren Steffy
A recent spate of closures of the iconic restaurant chain has left many communities in the lurch.
By Loren Steffy
Launched by two of the biggest names in Texas business, Clear Channel was once the most powerful—and feared—player in radio. Now rebranded as iHeartMedia, it’s on the brink of bankruptcy.
By Loren Steffy
The date is the anniversary of an important court ruling for oil industry employees.
By Loren Steffy
Operators need to monitor data from their wells in real time in order to prevent the next Deepwater Horizon, experts say.
By Loren Steffy
Recruiting new talent may become more challenging at a time when oil and gas companies need it most.
By Loren Steffy
How a wisecracking 95-year-old chemist plans to reenergize the future.
By Loren Steffy
Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton assures the public: ”There’s plenty of gasoline.”
By Loren Steffy
Higher gasoline prices are just another consequence of the storm.
By Loren Steffy
How the greatest deal maker in history got outmaneuvered in his bid for Oncor.
By Loren Steffy
Warren Buffett’s big bet with Oncor.
By Loren Steffy
The night supervisor on the Deepwater Horizon died at his home in Louisiana.
By Loren Steffy
And why its $11 million budget is a bargain.
By Loren Steffy
How did a small Houston oil company with grand ambitions get caught up in the biggest Ponzi scheme since Bernie Madoff?
By Loren Steffy
What's contango? It's a pricing picture that has helped keep your gasoline prices low, and it's almost gone.
By Loren Steffy
When OPEC let oil prices plunge, U.S. producers responded by improving fracking technology.
By Loren Steffy
With Rex Tillerson and Rick Perry on his team, Donald Trump is all set to revive the fortunes of the Texas energy sector.
By Loren Steffy
He’s often described as “diplomatic,” but negotiating business is different than negotiating global relations.
By Loren Steffy
A tale of cloned meat.
By Loren Steffy
How Yeti turned the lowly cooler into a hot commodity—and a white-hot IPO.
By Loren Steffy
The worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history is getting the Hollywood treatment in "Deepwater Horizon," out today.
By Loren Steffy
Four years after his indictment, one of the only people prosecuted for the Deepwater Horizon explosion tells his side of the story.
By Loren Steffy
Every month, the customers of the state’s smallest energy transmission utility open their bills—and can’t believe what they see.
By Loren Steffy
How Aubrey McClendon, “America’s most reckless billionaire,” left some Houston energy firms holding the tab.
By Loren Steffy
Can Walmart displace H-E-B as Texas’s grocer of choice?
By Loren Steffy
The rise of Rise, a private air-service start-up.
By Loren Steffy
Pretty soon, Round Top won’t look much like Round Top anymore.
By Loren Steffy
The iconic Texas burger chain’s oldest franchisee claims grocery store sales are part of plan to make its restaurants obsolete.
By Loren Steffy
How a Koch brother and a Texas rancher got crosswise.
By Loren Steffy