August Pfluger represents 29 counties of West Texas oil country, sits on committees with jurisdiction over energy, and just introduced a bill to shield domestic oil and gas small businesses from regulatory pressure. He also bought into a pair of energy pipeline partnerships on March 13, 2026, weeks before the bill hit the record. The public filings are there for anyone who wants to look. We looked.
What He's In the News For
Three Google News items in 24 hours is a busy day for a West Texas back-bencher. Pfluger introduced H.R. 8990, the Protect Domestic Oil and Gas Small Business Act of 2026. The name does what it says on the tin: it's a protective measure for the small operators who drill the Permian Basin that his district sits directly on top of. He's also been calling for airpower prioritization in the NDAA, which tracks for a former Air Force pilot who sits on Armed Services. And he announced his 2026 service academy appointments, which is the least controversial thing a member of Congress can do and yet still makes the news cycle when you need to fill the brief.
The oil and gas bill is the one that matters here. Pfluger is from Midland, Texas. His district produces crude. His bill protects producers. His portfolio, as of March 13, holds two pipeline-linked energy positions. The constituent interest and the legislative interest and the financial interest all converge in the same zip code. Make of that triangle what you will.
Seven Trades, One Day, Two Pipelines
Per the disclosure filings, Pfluger executed all seven of his trades in the last 90 days on a single date: March 13, 2026. Every one of them was a purchase. Every one of them fell in the 5,000-$50,000 range. The full record is available on Blind Trust's disclosure tracker.
The list: U-Haul Holding (UHAL), Barnes Group (B), Dorchester Minerals LP (DMLP), Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD), Berkshire Hathaway Class B (BRK/B), and two additional energy partnership-linked positions (LPDMLP and LPEPD). Seven tickets punched on the same Friday. A tidy single-session portfolio rebalance, or something like it.
Two of those positions are squarely in Pfluger's legislative lane. Enterprise Products Partners is one of the largest pipeline operators in the United States, a master limited partnership that moves natural gas liquids, crude oil, and refined products across the Gulf Coast region. Dorchester Minerals is a royalty and mineral interest company built almost entirely around domestic oil and gas production, concentrated heavily in the Permian Basin. That is Pfluger's district. That is his bill's constituency. That is his portfolio.
The 30-day alpha on Enterprise Products Partners after his March 13 purchase came in at 10.2%. Dorchester Minerals added 8.0%. U-Haul put up 8.8%. Barnes was flat. Three out of four positions with committee-adjacent or energy-adjacent angles logged positive returns. The filings flag a committee overlap on EPD specifically: Oil and Gas. Pfluger's district is oil and gas. His new bill is oil and gas. His March 13 purchase is oil and gas. The Venn diagram here is one circle.
The Timing on DMLP
This is where the calendar gets interesting. Pfluger purchased Dorchester Minerals on March 13. Four days later, on March 17, he voted on the MAWS Act of 2026 and the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act. Five days after the purchase, on March 18, he voted on the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act and the Deporting Fraudsters Act of 2026. Six days out, on March 19, the Federal Working Animal Protection Act.
To be precise: the suspicion scores our system assigns these DMLP overlaps run between 57 and 62 out of 100. Not the highest flags we've ever published. Not nothing, either. The votes themselves aren't energy-sector bills, which is the honest part of the story. The MAWS Act, the Hunters and Anglers Act, the Federal Working Animal Protection Act: none of these move crude prices.
What the overlap captures is simpler. Pfluger bought a Permian Basin royalty trust and four days later started voting on legislation. The trade date and the vote dates sit four to six days apart. That's the record. The connection between the specific bills and the specific holding is not obvious from the legislative text. The connection between the holding and Pfluger's broader legislative portfolio, including a brand-new oil and gas protection bill, is considerably more legible.
Banking Votes He Also Cast
While we're reading the roll calls: on May 20, 2026, Pfluger voted Yea on four financial-sector bills that passed the House. The American Access to Banking Act and the Community Bank Deposit Access Act of 2025 both carried market-relevance scores of 95 out of 100 on our tracker. The Keeping Deposits Local Act scored 80. All three passed. All three affect how banks handle deposits, service rural customers, and structure access to financial products.
Pfluger's March 13 buys included Berkshire Hathaway Class B and Barnes Group, neither of which is a community bank. But he holds the energy partnerships, and energy companies depend heavily on credit markets, pipeline financing, and the kind of regional banking infrastructure that serves Midland and Odessa and the 27 other counties in the 11th district. The community banking votes aren't a stretch from the energy portfolio. They're the same regional economy.
Members are required to disclose. They are not required to divest, recuse, abstain, blush, or look up from their phones.
The Bill and the Basket
Let's put it plainly. Pfluger introduced H.R. 8990, the Protect Domestic Oil and Gas Small Business Act of 2026. The bill's stated purpose is protecting small domestic producers from regulatory burden. The small domestic producers whose mineral rights Dorchester Minerals holds royalty interests in are, geographically, the same producers Pfluger represents and now legislates on behalf of.
Enterprise Products Partners moves those producers' output through pipelines to market. A regulatory environment more favorable to small domestic operators is an environment more favorable to the throughput volumes that pipeline MLPs like Enterprise depend on for distributions. Pfluger bought EPD on March 13. He introduced a bill friendlier to EPD's upstream customers sometime after. The 30-day return on EPD was 10.2%.
Pfluger's office has not issued any statement about his trading activity because nobody asked them to and there's no requirement that they do.
What the Portfolio Says About the Man
Seven trades, one day, 5K-$50K per ticket. The total disclosed exposure from March 13 is somewhere between 05,000 and $350,000, spread across a basket that reads like the investment account of someone who believes in Permian Basin energy production, American manufacturing (Barnes Group makes precision components), self-storage and moving logistics (U-Haul), and the comfort of a Warren Buffett-managed holding as the floor.
It's a conservative, Texas-flavored portfolio. It's also a portfolio that sits directly on top of Pfluger's committee work, his district's economic base, and his most recent piece of standalone legislation. The filings paint a picture of someone who eats his own cooking, which is either a sign of conviction or a conflict, depending on your threshold.
The Bluesky conversation around Pfluger this week touched on his exchange with a CISA official about cybersecurity authorities, his Medal of Honor legislation for a Vietnam-era Air Force officer, and his district profile. None of it reached the portfolio. That's what we're here for.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.