“We promoted the industry while making sure drilling in urban areas was safe and respected individual property rights and communities,” Ms. Davis said in a statement. “We must continue to support this industry, and its growth, while having common sense disclosure to protect homeowners, communities and first responders.”

Ms. Davis also used her office and legal background to assist mineral holders when energy company representatives flocked to Fort Worth in the mid-2000s in hopes of purchasing drilling rights. She encouraged residents to form neighborhood associations and pool leases.

A 2007 article in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described a meeting she helped organize between representatives from Fort Worth Energy and homeowners on the city’s south side, many of whom spoke only Spanish and struggled to understand parts of their contract. She publicly questioned several clauses, including those that allowed the company to explore for minerals other than natural gas and required homeowners to pay part of the cost of transporting gas extracted from their property.

The company’s president agreed at the meeting to strike the clauses for new leases.

In 2009, Ms. Davis later took those interests to Austin. As a state senator, she wrote or sponsored more than 20 bills related to oil and gas — few of which became law. They included proposals to require energy companies to monitor groundwater before drilling and disclose chemicals used in fracking fluid. She also pushed for stricter oversight of air quality near drilling rigs and worked with state regulators to position air monitors throughout the Barnett Shale.

In one case, she received support from pipeline operators, and eventually Gov. Rick Perry. She wrote legislation that allowed saltwater pipeline operators to send drilling wastewater to disposal sites using pipelines that stretched across state rights of way. The bill was meant to reduce truck traffic that would otherwise have been needed to haul away waste.

Sharon Wilson, a Texas-based organizer for Earthworks, a nonprofit that has pushed for more industry oversight, said that not all environmentalists agreed with Ms. Davis but that they generally appreciated her body of work.

Kinnan Golemon, an oil company lobbyist who dealt with Ms. Davis’s Senate office, said her governorship “would be difficult in some aspects of the industry” and could saddle drillers with some unnecessary costs. But he added that she “developed an understanding of the industry and some of its wants and needs” and that “she never closed us out from having meaningful discussions.”