Texas regulators investigating Atmos Energy for natural gas service failures during freeze

The Texas Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates the state’s oil and natural gas industry, is investigating Atmos Energy for failures in its natural gas services during last week’s deep freeze.

Earlier this week, Gov. Greg Abbott sent letters to state Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Railroad Commission directing them to investigate why many of the company’s customers in North and Central Texas were left without the natural gas necessary to use their water heaters, stoves, and furnaces as temperatures plunged in the days before Christmas.

In announcing the launch of the investigation late Wednesday, the Railroad Commission said Atmos Energy had reported “low pressure” as the reason why customers in parts of the state were experiencing interruptions in their natural gas services on Dec. 23. The company told the Railroad Commission the issue was resolved by the afternoon of Dec. 24.

In his letters this week, Abbott called the company’s performance during the freeze “unacceptable.”

“These failures forced the City of Grand Prairie to open a warming center for its residents. There were also widespread reports of customers unable to reach any Atmos Energy customer service representative,” Abbott wrote. “Substantial evidence supports the conclusion that Atmos Energy either was unprepared for the winter weather system, failed to perform for its customers as promised, or both.”

As part of the investigation, the Railroad Commission is seeking information from Atmos Energy on the cause and duration of the service outages, the number and location of the customers affected, and detailed plans for how the company will prevent similar issues in the future while also meeting growth in demand.

In a statement, Atmos Energy acknowledged that it “fell short” for its customers who lost access to natural gas last week, but it did not provide any other information as to the cause of the outages or actions the company is taking to prevent future outages.

“Though we worked to restore service as quickly and safely as possible, we apologize for that service disruption. We are committed to working with our regulators and key stakeholders to address those issues in order to provide reliable natural gas service to all our customers,” the company wrote.

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The issues Atmos Energy customers experienced during last week’s freeze are reigniting concerns from energy experts who say the Legislature did not take enough action to address problems with the electric grid after the deadly February 2021 freeze.

“This storm was nowhere near as extreme as (the 2021 freeze),” said Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, a nonprofit that advocates for improvements and transparency at the Railroad Commission. “So it's very troubling to hear that things weren't OK, or that in what should be an ordinary winter storm we were having low gas pressure in major cities.”

Abbott had previously claimed that all the issues with the grid were fixed after the implementation of Senate Bill 3, which passed during the 87th legislative session, despite critics arguing that the legislation didn’t go far enough to ensure the natural gas side of the industry would be prepared for future cold snaps.

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“These are systemic problems, and many of the problems can point directly back to a lack of effective regulation, really lack of any regulation almost whatsoever by the Railroad Commission,” said Doug Lewin, an energy expert and president of Stoic Energy.

“It seems like the oil and gas industry, at least their trade association representatives and the like, want it to be opaque, which I think is actually counterproductive because the quicker we understand what these problems are, the quicker we can fix them, and then they can actually back up their claims that they're reliable and dispatchable, because it's pretty apparent to anybody who's even halfway paying attention that gas is neither reliable nor dispatchable in extreme winter weather,” Lewin said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has indicated that one of his priorities in the upcoming legislative session will be addressing how lawmakers can encourage increased natural gas production and ensure the grid is reliable in severe weather.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas regulators investigating Atmos for natural gas outages in freeze