Another View: We froze and Abbott got paid – $1 million from the billionaire profiteer of Texas’ deadly storm | Opinion

If your hats and thick coats are not kept in a place where you can see them regularly, you may find it hard to remember that less than six months ago, in the midst of a debilitating pandemic, many of us pondered the possibility to freeze to death. Nowadays, with the summer sun drying up grass and backyard gardens, with temperatures soaring to the mid-90s, the February winter storm seems like a bad dream, although above-average utility bills continue to be a harrowing monthly reminder for many Texans that , yes, we lived through a two week winter nightmare.

Some, of course, don’t need a reminder at all. Her relatives did not survive the storm, which killed at least 200 people.Winter storm Uri cost us an estimated $ 293 billion in damage, and some estimates put the actual death toll at 700. Nearly 5 million Texans lost electricity; many more days without water. Notice?

One Texan who hasn’t forgotten is Kelcy Warren from Dallas, but not because he was concerned that he and his family were in danger. Warren, co-founder and now Executive Chairman of Energy Transfer Partners, lives in a 27,000-square-foot ivy-clad stone castle on nine acres in north Dallas. In 2009, he bought his humble residence for $ 29 million. We can imagine the heat lingering in Warren’s mansion (or maybe the family returned to their private island off the coast of Honduras).

We suspect the pipeline tycoon doesn’t remember the nearly $ 300 billion that the storm cost Texas. It’s $ 2.4 billion. As Justin Miller reported in the current issue of the Texas Observer, this is the profit Warren’s company made during the blackouts, a sizable portion of the $ 11 billion profit made by the natural gas industry as a whole, in Miller’s words , “Fuel sold at unprecedented prices”. Awards to desperate power generators and utilities during the state’s energy crisis. “

Warren, a hefty donor over the years to ex-Governor Rick Perry, ex-President Donald Trump, and other Republicans, made sure Governor Greg Abbott didn’t forget either. On June 23, Warren wrote a check for $ 1 million for Abbott’s re-election campaign. This is the biggest check Warren has ever given a Texan politician, according to campaign finance reports. And it’s four times the usual $ 250,000 gift Abbott has received from his trusted Dallas benefactor almost every year since he was elected governor in 2014.

It undoubtedly impressed Abbott, despite the fact that energy interests make its largest political contribution, investing more than $ 26 million in its political rise, the Associated Press reported, citing an analysis by the National Institute on Money in Politics.

Warren, a native of small town East Texas who plays guitar and writes songs in the spirit of Jackson Browne, knows how to play the game. Abbott too, of course. It is only fair to ask what the billionaire investor got in return for his millions of smakola.

The most obvious return on his investment probably wouldn’t have cost Warren a penny. This is the continued, gentle treatment that the powerful natural gas industry has traditionally enjoyed from the state government, including the current governor.

After the regular session of the Legislature, Abbott signed a package of laws allegedly tightening regulation of the state’s deplorable power grid. “Everything that had to be done was done to repair the power grid in Texas,” the governor announced at a signing ceremony in early June.

It was hard not to laugh at the governor’s false grave remarks, especially when the grille almost collapsed shortly afterwards under the weight of the early summer heat. Not everything was done to fix the grid. Supplying the utility industry, including oil and gas, had a higher priority.

Lawmakers approved more than $ 9 billion in bailout packages for the electricity utility industry to be paid for by ordinary utility companies over the next two or three decades. By spreading the cost of the winter storm across all Texans over a long period of time, they are betting that the monthly premium will be so small that people won’t complain.

As former Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy points out, Warren and the natural gas industry basically got a permit. They could have been winter storm heroes.

In Steffy’s words, “You could have prepared better and worked with the Railroad Commission to make sure the gas kept flowing. Instead, it seems they decided to take advantage of it. ”(Steffy credits Energy Transfer Partners, Warren’s company, for taking the necessary steps to protect the system and keep the gas flowing, while many other companies haven’t have done.)

Elected officials who do not depend on money made out of the misery of others would have met the energy needs of the people of Texas, not the millionaires and billionaires who help them stay in office. For example, you might have needed power reserves so that enough power would be available in any weather emergency. You could have ordered the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to liaise with the rest of the country just in case. They could have restructured the market so that both consumers and businesses have direct incentives to use energy more efficiently.

And they could have refused to make exceptions for natural gas companies to weathering and to set real deadlines. Instead, the legislature required that only gas systems that were considered “critical” be changed, as many gas companies in the past did not fill out simple forms in order to be classified as “critical”, which resulted in their own electricity supply being cut off during the Winter storms were interrupted just when they were needed most.

Edward Hirs, a UH Energy Fellow at the University of Houston, would give lawmakers an even bigger task. Hirs, who teaches energy at the University of Applied Sciences, has called on lawmakers to restructure ERCOT and the state Public Utility Commission (which oversees ERCOT) to ensure that board members and commissioners have no conflicts of interest. Legislators don’t. Since the job is done, as the governor proclaims, they will not do it.

Given the looming threat of climate change, neither the governor nor the legislature can assure us that we will not have to deal with or are ready for another Uri. You cannot reassure companies that consider Texas home to be that we can keep the flow of energy going. Why not build a multi-billion dollar factory or a state-of-the-art corporate campus in Oklahoma or another state of the sun belt that can guarantee a reliable energy supply?

Granted, thorough reform of the state energy system requires hard work, attention to detail, and the determination of a myriad of conflicting interests. It’s much easier to punish and scapegoat renewable energy sources, talk about a border wall and make plans to stop the wrong people from voting. It’s also much easier for elected officials to keep their sugar daddies happy.

Mother Jones magazine reported several years ago that one of Kelcy Warren’s songwriting activities included the following text: “Do you ever speak to angels? Put in a good word for me. “

We cannot confirm that. We can confirm that a politically ambitious governor we know speaks frequently to angel donors, puts in a good word, and much more. These angels make him happy. The rest of us should probably hang those winter coats and stocking caps on handy hooks in the meantime.

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