Natural gas production in Texas dropped by nearly half during the week of February’s historic winter freeze — a significant factor in the widespread blackouts that contributed to dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage — but a new report paid for by the gas industry’s main trade group largely absolves it of any blame for the calamity.
The study instead pegs electricity generators as the main culprits, saying some of their plants failed first during the frigid weather and then triggered a wave of outages throughout the state's interconnected power grid.
“The initial catalyst (for the outages) was on the generation side," said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association. "These were problems at the (generators) that cascaded across the grid.”