The Wall Street Journal reports:
As the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices walloped U.S. frackers this spring, Texas billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks got a $35 million relief loan to help one of their fracking companies stay afloat. At the same time, they were on a buying spree in the country’s oil patch.
Since spring, businesses controlled by the Wilks brothers have hunted for deals among fracking firms going through bankruptcy and taken or increased stakes in at least six other companies, corporate filings show.
But when it looked like the oil-and-gas industry would be shut out of a key pandemic lending program, they and others in the industry turned their attention to Washington, making an appeal for help in meetings with home-state senator Ted Cruz.
Read the full article.
Two Texas billionaires got a $35 million pandemic relief loan for one of their fracking companies, but only after Sen. Ted Cruz weighed in https://t.co/u3tkTDN9yW
— Jennifer Smith (@jensmithWSJ) December 27, 2020
Wilks brothers are longtime financial backers of Mr. Cruz. The brothers donated $15 million to a super PAC called Keeping the Promise that championed Mr. Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, making them the largest financial backers of his political career.https://t.co/13BC1rCMVc
— Ricardo White (@RicardoDWhite) December 27, 2020