Many of the natural gas producers said they lost electricity so they couldn't operate. [1] Oil and natural gas systems must have power to operate in all weather conditions. Without electricity to power these operations, the wells and production facilities will not operate. No amount of insulation, flow additives or equipment housing will overcome a sustained loss of power. Oil and natural gas facilities regularly operate in a wide range of severe weather conditions, but cannot operate when they don’t have power. Loss of power was the biggest factor in natural gas production issues during Winter Storm Uri in February.
When electricity supplies became short, ONCOR began rolling blackouts. If they had known who the natural gas producers were, they would have not denied electricity to them. [2] That meant that Oncor, which delivers power to the Permian Basin — the state’s most productive oil and natural gas basin — had unwittingly shut off some of the state’s power supply when it followed orders to begin the outages...simply because natural gas companies failed to fill out a form or didn’t know the form existed, company executives, regulators and experts said.
If the natural gas producers didn't have electricity pulled out from them, the worst would have been avoided. [2] “In my opinion, if we had kept the supply [of natural gas] on, we would’ve had minor disruptions,” James Cisarik, chairman of the Texas Energy Reliability Council, told legislators. “[Texas] has all the assets, we just have to make sure we evaluate every link in that chain to keep it going.”
[1] https://www.txoga.org/policy-issues/winterready/ [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/18/texas-winter-storm-b...