As a severe<\/u> winter storm swept Texas last week, cutting electricity from millions of residents in freezing temperatures and causing nearly 70 deaths so far, some energy executives saw an upside to the catastrophe.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot,” boasted Roland Burns, the chief executive of Comstock Resources, a shale drilling company that benefited from the sudden demand for natural gas, in a call with investors last Wednesday. The price for gas, said Burns, has been \u201cincredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marshall McCrea, the co-chief executive of pipeline firm Energy Transfer, told investors last Wednesday that\u00a0his company has \u201cbeen able to benefit,\u201d given its ability to transport gas from storage facilities near Houston to power plants across the state. The company, McCrea said, has transported large volumes of gas in Texas and capitalized on “very strong commodity prices.” Energy Transfer, when reached for comment, said that McCrea\u2019s comments \u201care pretty clear.\u201d Comstock Resources did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The price of natural gas, which skyrocketed as power plants and industrial consumers scrambled to secure additional supply, benefited other energy interests. Macquarie Group, an investment bank that is the second-biggest physical gas supplier in the U.S., reported a windfall of $210 million<\/a> from the swing in gas and electricity prices. The company also owns Griddy, a residential energy utility that has billed customers as much as $16,752<\/a> and $8,000 in recent days.<\/p>\n There was another “upside” to the Texas storm, McCrea noted during the call. “Just over the last four or five days,” he added, “the number one thing that everybody is recognizing, I’ve already said, and we all know on this call, how important fossil fuels are for this country, in this world.”<\/p>\n The crisis has<\/u> indeed sparked a debate over the role of fossil fuels, with some prominent Republicans taking to the air<\/a> to disingenuously blame only wind and solar energy rather than the failure of the grid as a whole. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely claim that the storm showed that the Green New Deal \u2014 a slogan for a package of renewable energy policies favored by some in Congress that has not been debated or implemented \u2014 \u201cwould be a deadly deal for the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, appeared on Fox News on Friday with host Sean Hannity to also point blame at renewable energy.<\/p>\n \u201cLast week in Texas,\u201d said Perry, \u201cas people were losing their power, thank God we had fossil fuels in this state, because if all we had had was the AOC Green New Deal plan, wind and solar, we would have had a massive disaster on our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n