As frozen Texas rolls under one of the worst power outages in U.S. history, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott blamed network operators and refrigerated wind turbines, but made it easier for another culprit: an oil and gas industry which is the state’s dominant business and its largest political contributor.
And as the toll deepened Friday from a week of historic winter storms that killed more than 20 people in Texas, the delivery of a power grid isolated from the rest of the country ignores warnings issued by the state’s IDP. leaders have been known for years.
“It’s almost like a murder suspect blaming their right hand man for committing the crime,” Democratic State Representative James Talarico said. His home in Austin in the suburbs lost 40 hours of power and had no working taps on Thursday, when about 1 in 4 people in Texas woke up under instructions to boil water.
The power of Talarico, like most of the state’s 30 million residents, is controlled by network executives at the Texas Electric Reliability Council, known as ERCOT, which Abbott laid down again Thursday after more than 4 million people at one point interrupted endured. freezing temperatures.
But this is not where the responsibility ends, as power stations that power the net have been knocked down by the extreme cold offline and natural gas producers have not protected the drill heads from freezing. “ERCOT is a comfortable whip boy,” Talarico said.
The crisis put the fossil fuel industry flooding the Capitol of Texas with money in ways that Abbott did not have to navigate when he managed America’s second largest state through other disasters, including hurricanes and the ongoing pandemic. Abbott on Thursday appealed to Texas for the first time to order power stations to be overwintered.
Oil and gas built and enriched Texas, and with it the politicians, including those who became president.
But no one has made field contributions on the scale of Abbott, who has raised more than $ 150 million from donors in six years, more than any governor in American history.
Texas’ energy interests are the biggest pillar of his political rise, and he did not rule out a 2024 White House career. More than $ 26 million of its contributions 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.
As the Texas network began winding up early Monday, Abbott suffered a setback after going on Fox News and blaming solar and wind producers, at a time when natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for almost twice as many interruptions.
Abbott later pressed on to these comments, adopting a softer tone, acknowledging that every power source was compromised.
ERCOT is overseen by the Texas Public Utility Commission, whose three members are appointed by Abbott. While ERCOT manages most of Texas’ power network, the commission and the Texas legislature are making important policy decisions that have competed in the ongoing crisis.
Following the state’s last freeze, during the 2011 Super Bowl in Arlington, a federal analysis found that energy producers’ procedures for wintering their equipment were ‘in many cases inadequate or inadequate’. The report repeatedly cites another freeze in Texas, in 1989, as a clear warning.
Around cold climate systems surrounded by generators against severe winter weather.
In Iowa, where wind farms supply 40% of the state’s electricity, wind pumps run all week, despite temperatures dropping to minus 17 degrees in Des Moines.
A decade ago, the report on the recent failure in Texas included a number of ways to overwinter an oil well or a natural gas appliance and the estimated cost: installing a cold-weather production unit ($ 23,000), the collection of gas vented from an injection pump provides a heater ($ 675), or builds a fiberglass hut to include the production equipment ($ 1,500).
Overwintering 50,000 wells – just under a third of the total number of natural gas wells operating in Texas – would cost as much as $ 1.75 billion in 2011, a figure that would almost certainly be higher today due to inflation. By comparison, the Texas oil and gas industry alone paid $ 13.9 billion in taxes and royalties last year, according to figures from the Texas Oil & Gas Assn.
Republican Ryan Sitton, the former Texas Railroad Commissioner who regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, said the cost to electric customers is to strengthen power stations. On Abbott’s focus on ERCOT, Sitton said: ‘It’s easy to investigate. To conduct a good investigation and take ownership of the results is the place where the rubber meets the road. ‘
He said oil and gas interests, which had generously funded his own political campaigns, did not stop the swing of the public.
“They make sure donations. But unless the entire energy industry speaks with a unified voice, which almost never happens, there is not that much influence, “Sitton said.