You Can Make How Much Just For Passing A Drug Test?

See Regulator says pipeline fight raises issues for lawmakers. Excerpt:

"[Barry] Smitherman, whose agency regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas, spoke at a daylong energy conference hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership, offering an unabashed defense of fossil fuels and the shale oil and gas renaissance.

"I've always heard that solar panels are only two years away from parity with fossil fuels," he said. "The problem is, fossil fuels don't stand still either."

Smitherman, a former Harris County prosecutor and former chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, said he had never been to Midland before he was appointed to the Railroad Commission in 2011.

Now, he said, it is once again the epicenter of the state's oil boom, with 20 percent of the nation's oil and gas produced in the Permian Basin.

"If you can pass a drug test, you can drive a truck and make $80,000 a year in Midland," he said.

But the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas is "the hottest play in America," he said, with some experts predicting its reserves may hold more crude oil than any find in U.S. history."