Thread by @MichaelEWebber

The Texas Oil & Gas Association (TXOGA) paid ENVERUS to prepare a report.

The report says gas = good & wind/electricity = bad

Are you surprised that a consulting company gave its customer a report that makes them look good?

The report is highly flawed. Let’s dig in. [THREAD]

Main problem: It says that gas supply disruptions were because of power outages rather than the other way around.

But that doesn’t make sense from an engineering perspective: gas supplies started to fail Feb 10-12 & load shedding in ERCOT didn’t begin until 1:20 a.m. Feb 15.

The report makes a fundamental mistake, confusing OUTAGES for LOAD SHED. There are always outages, but rarely load shed.

This mistake undermines the entire logic of the report's conclusions. This sequence (gas failed first, power failed second) is critical, yet they missed it.

But there are several other big problems with the report.

It’s based on surveys, rather than instrumental measurements. Survey respondents have an incentive to push a particular narrative so this survey is at risk of severe bias. That bias is not discussed or corrected for.

Surveys are always difficult, by the way, but this one is mysterious because its data collection methods aren’t revealed. Were data collected over the web? By phone? With an interviewer or automated? Was the sampling representative geographically?

Results are summarized by % of respondents rather than production-weighting the answers which is a HUGE problem.

For example, if 65% of respondents complain about power cutoffs but only represent 20% of production it changes how to interpret the results. That's a major flaw.

Outage and load shedding data are primarily shown for February 14th and beyond, conveniently ignoring the problems with gas in the days leading up to that period.

It says interconnections don’t help with grid reliability, pointing to outages in the Eastern Interconnection to prove the point, somehow forgetting entirely about the Western Interconnection. El Paso did fine with its power, but the report skips right over that.

The surveys did not ask whether gas producers had signed up for interruptible power, winterized equipment, or registered their sites w/ ERCOT as critical infrastructure.

These questions would probe whether gas companies acted responsibly but were left out entirely.

If gas systems lost power before load shedding began Feb 15 it’s likely b/c they signed up for interruptible power and/or failed to winterize.

If gas systems lost power after load shedding began Feb 15 it’s likely b/c they failed to register with ERCOT as a critical site.

The report fails to consider those aspects that would cast gas in a bad light, and instead focuses on aspects that would cast the power sector in a bad light.

Overall this report presents non-rigorous, sloppy, biased work that misinterprets some key points, fails to examine critical issues, doesn't reveal its methods, and uses faulty logic to draw a conclusion that would make its client happy.

Ya know, just what you'd expect. [END]

Dear @threadreaderapp please unroll