As a severe winter storm swept Texas last week, cutting electricity from millions of residents in freezing temperatures and causing nearly 70 deaths so far, some energy executives saw an upside to the catastrophe. interc.pt/2OXGdo0
“Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot,” boasted Roland Burns, the chief executive and chief financial officer of Comstock Resources, a shale drilling company that benefited from the sudden demand for natural gas, in a call with investors last Wednesday.
Ronald Mills, the vice president of investor relations at Comstock Resources, said the company apologizes for the use of the word “jackpot” to describe natural gas prices last week.
Marshall McCrea, the co-chief executive of pipeline firm Energy Transfer, told investors last Wednesday that his company has “been able to benefit,” given its ability to transport gas from storage facilities near Houston to power plants across the state.
The company, McCrea said, has transported large volumes of gas in Texas and capitalized on “very strong commodity prices.”
There was another “upside” to the Texas storm, McCrea noted.
“Just over the last four or five days,” he added, “the number one thing that everybody is recognizing, I’ve already said, and we all know on this call, how important fossil fuels are for this country, in this world.”
“Just over the last four or five days,” he added, “the number one thing that everybody is recognizing, I’ve already said, and we all know on this call, how important fossil fuels are for this country, in this world.”
The crisis in Texas has indeed sparked a debate over the role of fossil fuels, with some prominent Republicans taking to the air to disingenuously blame only wind and solar energy rather than the failure of the grid as a whole.
Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, appeared on Fox News on Friday to point blame at renewable energy.
“Thank God we had fossil fuels in this state, because if all we had had was the AOC Green New Deal plan, wind and solar, we would have had a massive disaster on our hands.”
“Thank God we had fossil fuels in this state, because if all we had had was the AOC Green New Deal plan, wind and solar, we would have had a massive disaster on our hands.”
A follow-up story on the Fox News website, published after Perry’s appearance, noted that “natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels combined.”
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