The whole country’s natural gas costs skyrocketed during the the feb freeze. This is due to supply and demand as well as shortages due to Texas gas grid going down for nearly the whole storm. Texas is by far the largest gas source in the Middle American gas grid system. Colorado being on the same grid. Texas gas producers didn’t listen when we industry professionals told them in 2011 to harden the well heads, the gas liquid separators the Y gas separation plants and most importantly back up the electric gas compressor stations with natural gas or diesel back up power sources. The natural gas grid operators FLAT OUT IGNORED the industry professionals and our recommendations for purely profit motives. When Texas gas grid went down it took.60% of the gas supply off the market in a few hours time of course the market reaction is record prices that is the market signal to cut consumption. The fact is had the Texas RRC who runs the gas grid followed the recommended course of action in 2011 the gas grid would have stayed running and the whole.shortages avoided. It was the epic failure of the RRC and the Texas gas grid when it froze up as we told them it would in subzero temps that caused not only the blackouts but also the record fuel costs. More than half of the power plants off line in the blackouts were natural gas turbine plants who simply could not get the fuel they needed due to frozen well heads and liquid separators. Texas monthly did a dang fine write up about it with all the fact check and double check and then backed up by ERCOT report to the Texas legislature they just released. The gas grid had an epic totally preventable failure period full stop.
i read that electricity had gotten so scarce at one point that consideration was given to withdrawing the remaining electricity powering the compressors, separators, and the other NG grid infrastructure by NOT making that a top priority, but that didn’t happen only because it was pointed out that if that happened, then the texas NG and power grid might not ever have been able to restart again ... texas came within a gnats whisker of TOTAL disaster because the dumbasses that operate the grid didn’t think it was possible for texas to lose electricity on that scale due to natural conditions and therefore punted on providing standalone, backup power generation for the various critical portions of the NG production and delivery infrastructure ...