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by fbdab103 938 days ago
>There was not only insufficient power generation capacity online, but also insufficient natural gas supply to the power plants. The failure of some gas distribution infrastructure, which had not been adequately winterized, resulted in exceedingly high prices for natural gas. Some gas compressor stations lost power when utilities began shutdowns, and overall gas supply fell by 85%.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

2 comments

One related thing that happened was that when the rolling blackouts started, the power companies had a list of critical customers that should not be cut off like hospitals, police stations, etc. Unfortunately some natural gas pumping stations were not on that list (or were on the list but were ignored), so they got cut off. Which of course created a positive feedback loop.
Look at the dip in Permian versus Haynesville, Eagle Ford, Barnett and Fayetteville. Permian is West Texas where I said I was and it didn't even dip below the previous low. East Texas is a whole other country...
The stacked line chart [1] of daily production by basin on the wiki page is very misleading. Following through to the source EIA data [2] and comparing Feb 2021 against Jan and March 2021 shows permian production down 19% from "average", the biggest decrease of the reported basins. The other basins you mentioned were between 13 and 18% below their "average". Of course this is a pretty big extrapolation from a monthly average number...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Natural_gas_production_an... [2] - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-na...