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It's now becoming clear that while millions of Texans endured days of power cuts, the state's gas producers contributed to fuel shortages, allowing pipelines and traders to profit handsomely off them. Associated Press writer Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.The official autopsy of the great Texas winter blackout of February 2021 quickly established a clear timeline of events: Electric utilities cut off power to customers and distributors as well as natural gas producers, which in turn triggered a negative feedback loop that sunk the state deeper and deeper into frigid darkness. But unless the entire energy industry is speaking with a unified voice, which almost never happens, there’s not that much influence,” Sitton said. He said oil and gas interests, which generously funded his own political campaigns, don’t hold the sway the public imagines. Actually performing a good investigation and taking ownership of the results is where the rubber meets the road.” Of Abbott’s focus on ERCOT, Sitton said, “Calling for an investigation is easy. Republican Ryan Sitton, the former commissioner of the peculiarly named Texas Railroad Commission that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, said an issue with bolstering power plants is the cost passed on to electric customers. By comparison, the Texas oil and natural gas industry paid $13.9 billion in taxes and royalties last year alone, according to figures from the Texas Oil & Gas Association. Winterizing 50,000 wells - just under a third of the number of total natural gas wells active in Texas - was estimated in 2011 to cost as much as $1.75 billion, a figure that would almost certainly be higher today due to inflation. In Texas, grid officials say they can’t speak for why power generators here don’t do the same.Ī decade ago, the report on the last Texas failure lists a number of ways to winterize an oil well or a natural gas device and the estimated costs: installing a cold-weather production unit ($23,000), collecting gas vented from an injection pump to supply a heater ($675), or building a fiberglass hut to enclose the production equipment ($1,500).

In Iowa, where wind farms supply 40% of the state’s electricity, windmills have been turning all week despite temperatures that dropped to minus 17 degrees in Des Moines. Girding power generators against fierce winter weather is essential in colder climates. The report repeatedly cites another Texas freeze, in 1989, as a clear warning. While ERCOT manages most of Texas’ power grid, the commission and the Texas Legislature make key policy decisions that have factored into the ongoing crisis.Īfter the state’s last major freeze, during the 2011 Super Bowl held in Arlington, Texas, a federal analysis found that energy producers’ procedures for winterizing their equipment “were either inadequate or were not adequately followed” in many cases. “It’s especially unacceptable when you realize what ERCOT told the state of Texas,” Abbott said.ĮRCOT is overseen by the Texas Public Utility Commission, whose three members are appointed by Abbott.

But he accused ERCOT of misleading the public with messages that the grid was ready for the storm. Pressed on those comments later, Abbott took a softer tone and acknowledged every source of power had been compromised. More than $26 million of his contributions have come from the oil and gas industry, more than any other economic sector, according to an analysis by the National Institute on Money in Politics.Īs Texas’ grid first began buckling early Monday, Abbott drew overnight backlash after going on Fox News and laying fault on solar and wind producers, at a time when natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages. Texas’ energy interests are the biggest backers of his political rise, and he has not ruled out a White House run in 2024. But none has reaped campaign contributions on the scale of Abbott, who in six years in office has raised more than $150 million from donors, more than any governor in U.S. Oil and gas built and enriched Texas, and with that its politicians, including those who became president. For the first time Thursday, Abbott called on Texas to mandate that power plants be winterized. The crisis has put the fossil fuel industry that lavishes the Texas Capitol with money in the crosshairs in ways that Abbott has not had to navigate when steering America’s second-largest state through other disasters, including hurricanes and the ongoing pandemic.