The Texas Disaster Freezing Sacrifices At The Alter Of Wind And Solar Power
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 08:00
VIEWED: 11410
PAGE 10 of 18
Quote:Capitalism is the opposite of Utilitarianism. This multi-billion dollar transfer of wealth from the poor to rich was made by a Texas Commission guided by the Capitalism mythology:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
SECOND's eyes light up and his brain goes ka-ching!
Because he's a utilitarian.
https://www.rrc.texas.gov/about-us/commissioners/
The commissioners are Republicans:
https://ballotpedia.org/Christi_Craddick
https://ballotpedia.org/James_Wright_(Texas)
https://ballotpedia.org/Wayne_Christian_(Texas_legislator)
The voters could have picked anybody but those three swindlers. The swindle is only an extra few dollar per month in the voter's natural gas bill, every month, for the rest of the voter's lives. Too bad, but that is how Capitalism works and the swindlers will deny they authorized a slow, long-term swindle.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
And you're part of that capitalist dream, SECOND, along with those rich Texans you always say you respect. Great job being a utilitarian!
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:If you burn natural gas, or gasoline, you are part of the Capitalism mythology, where prices are set by supply and demand. Except the mythology is a scam, a swindle. Prices are arbitrarily set by people, which is why Republican commissioners in Texas could arbitrarily take $billions from millions of buyers and give to dozens of sellers. The buyers will complain, but they will pay in Capitalism. In Utilitarianism, the Republican commissioners go to jail for swindling the buyers and the sad sellers have to be satisfied with not selling for 100 times the normal price of natural gas. So sad.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
And you're part of that capitalist dream, SECOND, along with those rich Texans you always say you respect. Great job being a utilitarian!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Yep. You lied about being a utilitarian. You find its workings sad.
In Utilitarianism, the Republican commissioners go to jail for swindling the buyers and the sad sellers have to be satisfied with not selling for 100 times the normal price of natural gas. So sad.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:When every you write, 1kiki, I get the strong feeling you are unaware that you are full of bullshit. I can't be sure, because you are only disembodied words, but real Texans I know who express the same opinions you do have to struggle daily to stay in the middle class because of the bullshit they believe is Truth guides their decisions.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:Yep. You lied about being a utilitarian. You find its workings sad.
In Utilitarianism, the Republican commissioners go to jail for swindling the buyers and the sad sellers have to be satisfied with not selling for 100 times the normal price of natural gas. So sad.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Final Report on February 2021 Freeze Underscores Winterization Recommendations
November 16, 2021
FERC, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and NERC’s regional entities today issued the final report examining the impact the February 2021 freeze had on the bulk electric system in Texas and other parts of the South Central U.S. This 300-page analysis underscores preliminary recommendations released earlier this fall. The final report includes additional details regarding the need to strengthen rules for cold weather preparedness and coordination to prevent a recurrence of last winter’s blackouts.
More at https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/final-report-february-2021-freez
e-underscores-winterization-recommendations
Federal officials concluded that natural gas production equipment freezing up cut off twice as much gas supply as rolling blackouts and downed power lines providing power to natural gas pipeline compressors. The freezing of equipment was completely avoidable, but wasn't avoided because it would have cost money. Why was the money not spent to prevent freezing? Because the resulting natural gas shortages would cause a jump of 100 times in the price of gas. The production companies wanted that price jump, which would not happen if the companies had prevented their equipment from freezing, so the companies didn't prevent it.
The Federal government will probably add rules to curb companies from cheating their customers and falsely blaming the cold weather for super high prices when the gas shortage was deliberately engineered by the companies, which patiently wait for freezing weather as a convenient excuse to price gouge and cheat their customers without the companies being punished by the Federal government. With new rules, punishment will now be possible after years of litigation against the companies that cheat.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Natural gas companies failed again, showing Texas energy system still vulnerable
by Chris Tomlinson, Staff writer, Jan. 7, 2022
No one died (this time) 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 the Bloomberg news agency 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.”
The Reuters news agency 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 did report releasing dangerous and harmful gases because their equipment froze. Refinitiv, which supplies critical information to commodity traders, only 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 they were 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 de
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. But on February 16, 2021, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.
During the February 2021 freeze, the gas industry failed to deliver critically needed fuel, and while Texans of all stripes suffered, the gas industry scored windfall profits of about $11 billion.
It’s possible that some of the massive profits were illicit. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking into potential market manipulation by Texas pipeline companies, which are subject to the least regulation and oversight of any pipelines in the country. Those companies operate in a regulatory penumbra. For their pipelines operating only in Texas, they’re generally exempt from reporting tariffs and other market information the federal government requires of interstate pipelines.
More at https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Freezing temps heading for Texas could result in gas shortfalls this week, Houston pipeline company Kinder Morgan warned its customers. It's actually a warning that price gouging may happen.
Temperatures in some areas of the Permian Basin could dip into the teens overnight Thursday, which may result in so-called freeze-offs, when liquid inside a well freezes and halts natural gas production.
Last year, supply shortages contributed to a power crisis during February’s winter storm, when equipment froze and 51,173 megawatts of the state’s 82,513 megawatts of generation capacity was forced offline.
Kinder Morgan generated about $1 billion in excess profits during the last shortage by selling much-needed gas at sky-high market rates and looks forward to more excess profits this year.
More at https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Kinder-Morgan
-warns-that-cold-this-week-could-16789128.php
If you want to see how price gouging works to rob you, read
Cold weather brings near record-high natural gas spot prices
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47016
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.03.05/main.svg
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.03.05/chart2.svg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:seems an advantage to know when the cold will come, and that the prices will skyrocket.
Originally posted:
Freezing temps heading for Texas could result in gas shortfalls this week, Houston pipeline company Kinder Morgan warned its customers. It's actually a warning that price gouging may happen.
Temperatures in some areas of the Permian Basin could dip into the teens overnight Thursday, which may result in so-called freeze-offs, when liquid inside a well freezes and halts natural gas production.
Last year, supply shortages contributed to a power crisis during February’s winter storm, when equipment froze and 51,173 megawatts of the state’s 82,513 megawatts of generation capacity was forced offline.
Kinder Morgan generated about $1 billion in excess profits during the last shortage by selling much-needed gas at sky-high market rates and looks forward to more excess profits this year.
More at https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Kinder-Morgan
-warns-that-cold-this-week-could-16789128.php
If you want to see how price gouging works to rob you, read
Cold weather brings near record-high natural gas spot prices
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47016
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.03.05/main.svg
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.03.05/chart2.svg
Heat the house to 90 degrees the day before the cold night, get out layers of blankets and comforters, turn off the heat when prices are too high.
Might think that homes are not insulated for winter. But they must be insulated for summer A/C, which is really the same. Averaging the temp from 90 down to teens should still remain above freezing. And if stove, oven is electric instead of gas, then boiling water or leaving the oven door open could do the trick.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME