GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Low gas pressure, or in some cases no gas pressure, meant residents across Texas could not heat their homes during dangerously cold temperatures as a pre-Christmas arctic blast descended upon the state.
Neither Atmos Energy nor the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the gas industry, would confirm how many homes were without gas service.
They would only say extremely high demand meant low pressure for customers in certain areas but that there was no gas supply issues overall.
WFAA heard from viewers from Little Elm, Fort Worth, Arlington, and Grand Prairie who experienced problems.
Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen said the Grand Peninsula and Westchester neighborhoods in his city suffered severe outages, even though he’d been promised they wouldn’t.
“Atmos had told me, and I told my citizens -- no worries,” he said. “I’m going to be more cautious next time.”
Grand Peninsula lost gas for three days during the 2021 winter storm, Jensen said, and Atmos had started a project to add lines.
The project is not complete, but he said the company told him homeowners would not suffer the same fate this time.
“The cold front comes through just like we were told and within eight hours – eight blanking hours -- our gas went off at our fire station 10,” he said.
The city brought in portable heaters to ensure water inside tanker trucks didn’t freeze at two of its fire stations.
“Something’s wrong with the system when the only provider in the state of Texas can’t give me eight hours' worth of gas when a cold front comes through,” Jensen said.
The 2021 storm forced transparency into the state’s electric industry, but not the gas industry.
Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy and host of the Texas Power Podcast, said the gas industry is as opaque as possible.
After 2021, the Public Utility Commission set a standard for power plants as to how they’re supposed to perform in extreme weather.
“That standard is published. Everybody knows about it. They have inspections for all power plants. There are no exemptions,” Lewin said.
By contrast, he said, “the only pieces of gas infrastructure that have to be weatherized are on the electricity supply chain map. And we don’t know what’s on the electricity supply chain map.”
“Not only is it not public, there is not even a legislative exemption. So, legislators have no idea what’s on that map. They are legally not allowed to know," he said.
Jensen said he will take the matter to Governor Greg Abbott in January when the next legislative session begins in Austin.
“Obviously the city doesn’t have a big enough stick, so we are going to go get another stick,” he said. “If we can’t sustain our heaters with gas through this? Oh, my goodness.”