David Dewhurst served his country and the State of Texas, first as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, then in the CIA and later as Texas Land Commissioner and Lt. Governor of Texas from 2003 to 2015.
When he left the CIA, Dewhurst returned to Houston to begin his career in business. In the early 1980s, he started his own company, but like so many other Texas businesses at the time, he lost nearly everything when the oil and gas and real estate markets went bust.
Dewhurst re-formed Falcon Seaboard in the mid-1980s and was instrumental in redirecting the company into the emerging cogeneration power business, while developing and operating oil and gas properties offshore Gulf of Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Canada.
After leading Falcon Seaboard’s sale of its power generation plants and pipelines, Dewhurst felt the call back to government service. In 1999, he was sworn in as Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office and then, in 2002, was elected Lt. Governor of Texas, a position he held from 2003-2015.
In the 2000s, Dewhurst invested capital into a discovery field in the Colorado Piceance coal bed methane, traditional gas, and Mancos Shale formations. Directly involved with managing this play, Dewhurst and his partners have now discovered 40 Tcf of gas-in-place, as well as built a pipeline to move the gas to the West Coast.
During his tenure as Lieutenant Governor, Dewhurst was the chief architect of the “Texas Miracle,” the largest sustained economic expansion in state history, by cutting taxes 54 times, reducing state spending and maintaining the lightest possible regulatory hand in the country, all targeted at making Texas irresistible for investment and job creation. He has now returned to lead Falcon Seaboard in its next chapter of growth.
Dewhurst received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arizona and attended Georgetown University Law School. A college basketball player at the University of Arizona and champion cutting horse rider, Dewhurst was inducted into the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2009. He and his family live in Houston. He is a native Houstonian.