Shared from the 1/9/2022 Houston Chronicle eEdition

Texas electric grid still is not reliable

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Staff file photo

A flare burns off harmful gases when natural gas operations are disrupted.

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Brett Coomer / Staff photographer

A federal report held the natural gas industry responsible for last February’s power blackouts.

Texas experienced a routine cold snap over New Year’s weekend, but it was enough to take up to a quarter of natural gas operations briefly offline, release tons of methane into the atmosphere and send prices higher, reminiscent of the freeze last year that killed 246 people.

No one died, nor did the system’s burp cause power outages. But the dip does raise questions about what would happen if another polar vortex dropped into Texas and whether officials have done enough to protect the electric grid.

A team of reporters at Bloomberg News first reported how “instruments froze, output plunged and companies spewed a miasma of pollutants into the atmosphere in a bid to keep operations stable.”

Texas natural gas suppliers released or burned nearly 1 million cubic feet of natural gas, according to compulsory filings with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

BloombergNEF data showed natural gas production sharply dropping at a rate unseen since last February.

The dozen or so affected facilities reported also releasing 85 tons of sulfur dioxide and 11 tons of carbon monoxide, all because corporations did not adequately prepare their equipment for temperatures frequently seen in West Texas.

“The incidents show that our fossil fuel-dependent energy system continues to be unreliable, polluting, and unprepared for the impacts of the climate crisis,” the Lone Star Sierra Club said in a statement. “Not only did these incidents release pollution that harms public health, they led to a dip in supply that impacted gas and electricity prices for millions of Texans.”

Reuters reported Monday that national natural gas prices rose 2 percent after the cold in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

“Gas prices have been falling recently with the rise in production but gained on Monday as the freeze-offs disconcerted the market,” John Abeln, senior analyst of natural gas research at data provider Refinitiv, told Reuters.

Natural gas production in the lower 48 states dropped by 2.8 billion cubic feet per day during the freeze. Most of that went offline in Texas, Abeln added.

The Texas Railroad Commission regulates natural gas production. Last year, commissioners announced new rules to improve reliability, but those will not take effect until 2023.

I asked the commission for their take on what happened and what it says about the resiliency of natural gas and its role supporting the electric grid in times of crisis. Spokesperson Andrew Keese said the commission had seen no indications of a problem over the weekend.

“The agency has not received any information suggesting that production decreased anywhere near the extent some media outlets have reported,” he wrote in an email. “Pipeline nominations are not the best data source to estimate real-time production changes, especially given markets were closed for the holiday weekend.”

“During the weekend and after, producers did not report any major disruption of gas production,” Keese added.

In other words, the Railroad Commission says there is nothing to see here. But that’s not true.

Natural gas companies reported releasing dangerous and harmful gases because their equipment froze. Refinitiv, which supplies critical information to commodity traders, makes money from providing accurate data.

Railroad commissioners, meanwhile, have been trying to convince Texans to look the other way for decades. More than two-thirds of their campaign donations come from the industry they regulate, and their rules around safety and environmental protection are the weakest in the nation.

After the February freeze, then-Chair Christi Craddick denied the natural gas industry was responsible for the blackouts. Six months later, however, federal investigators proved the industry was the main trigger for the disaster.

Current Chair Wayne Christian distributes misleading statistics on social media, blaming wind and solar generation for the blackouts, doing his best to acquit his donors of any fault. He refuses to acknowledge how the Texas electric grid was designed to rely on natural gas in an emergency. When we needed them most, the companies he oversees failed to deliver.

According to Bloomberg, Pioneer Natural Resources reported releasing most of the greenhouse gases over the weekend. I left a message with their media relations manager, who did not return my call, just as they ignored Bloomberg’s call.

Pioneer’s PAC was Christian’s largest donor at $10,000 during the 2020 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance tracking site.

Texans are unlikely to see another polar vortex this year, but that should not breed complacency.

The weekend burp proves the Railroad Commission is still doing more to protect the industry from regulation than Texans from frostbite. Voters should keep that in mind as Christian runs for re-election this year.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics. twitter.com/cltomlinsonchris.tomlinson@chron.com

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