GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Atmos Energy told Texas officials that demand exceeded the company’s “contingency planning” when more than 2,300 customers saw their gas service interrupted during a pre-Christmas arctic blast.
In the days after the winter event, Gov. Greg Abbott, as well as local and state officials, demanded that Atmos explain why hundreds of residents in North Texas found themselves with little or no gas pressure, leaving them unable to heat their homes as life-threatening cold temperatures swept the state.
“The issue was not system-wide,” Atmos said in response to a letter from state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, who represents portions of Arlington and Grand Prairie. “It was caused by demand during the winter event that exceeded our contingency planning in local areas.”
“Going forward, we recognize the need to have even more robust contingency planning and enhance our redundant capabilities…,” the letter stated.
Turner told WFAA in an interview Tuesday that he is not yet satisfied with the company’s answers.
“I think there's some useful information in there, but I think there's still a lot of incomplete answers,” Turner said. “We still don't understand exactly why the system failed for so many households in Grand Prairie and Arlington on December 22 and 23. I don't have a clear understanding of exactly how that's going to be prevented, again, in the future, should there be another full weather event, which there very well could be as we're only in January.
Turner said he, Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen and state Sens. Royce West and Nathan Johnson met with Atmos officials a week ago on the first day of the legislative session.
He said he also plans to meet soon with the senior staff of the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) to discuss Atmos' answers and to consider next steps. The RRC regulates gas companies.
For the first time Atmos detailed the number of customers affected by the storm.
Atmos told the RRC that 2,306 customers reported “service interruptions.” Those included 226 in Arlington, 179 in Grand Prairie, 231 in Fort Worth and 24 in Benbrook – amounting to less than one percent of the customers in those cities.
“Based on available information, the service interruptions lasted on average 14 hours in Arlington, 12 hours in Grand Prairie, 13 hours in Fort Worth and 11 hours in Benbrook,” Atmos told the RRC.
Atmos told the RRC that the service interruptions were “caused by different circumstances than those experienced” during the February 2021 winter storm.
In the 2021 winter storm, the company said it struggled to obtain natural gas supplies. However, in the most recent winter event, the company said, “the service interruptions were primarily due to instances of capacity restraints where demand exceeded our contingency plans in localized areas.”
Grand Prairie officials were outraged by the recent outages and sent a Dec. 28 letter asking the RRC to hold Atmos accountable for “insufficient responses” during the recent winter storm.
“Over the last four winter weather events, our history with Atmos has underlined a harmful pattern of infrastructure failure in isolated neighborhoods, delayed communication and an absence of proactiveness in public education,” wrote Mayor Ron Jensen and City Manager Steve Dye.
Jensen told WFAA last month that the Grand Peninsula and Westchester neighborhoods in his city suffered severe outages, even though he’d been promised they wouldn’t.
Two of the city’s fire stations also lost gas pressure completely about eight hours into the winter event.
In the letter, Grand Prairie city officials also faulted Atmos officials for failing to communicate before gas pressures “significantly dropped” and for failing to notify “impacted residents” about how to report outages, which forced the city to send its own emergency message on behalf of Atmos.
“This latest winter storm was predicted, well in advance and Atmos’ service failed only eight hours into extreme cold weather, and they also failed to proactively notify our city as to the loss in pressure,” the letter said.
In its response to Rep. Turner, Atmos said it would take additional provisions for having more compressed natural gas available in areas of Grand Prairie, Arlington, Fort Worth and Benbrook during future winter storms.
“We are committed to working with our state regulators and state agency partners to prepare for and respond to future weather events,” the letter to Turner said.
Atmos told RRC officials that it should have met with Grand Prairie officials to discuss its plans and preparation for the winter season. The company said it had completed two of three projects to support increased demand for natural gas in the Grand Peninsula area.
The company said that it had completed 10 projects in Arlington, Grand Prairie and Mansfield. Two projects have nearly been completed. The projects cost about $11 million.