Texas, the fossil fuel center of the US, was let down by its natural gas delivery system during last week’s energy crisis, according to the head of the country’s top independent power producer. The critical comments from Curt Morgan, chief executive of Vistra, one of the largest consumers of natural gas and coal in the US electric power sector, were made on Thursday to a panel investigating the emergency.
Generators fuelled by gas, wind, coal and nuclear energy all faltered during the record freeze that left more than 30 people dead. The collapse in generation led some politicians to blame renewable energy sources to the exclusion of others. But Morgan said that the most significant problem lay with getting supplies of gas to gas-fired generators, given their dominant share of supplies to the Texas grid.
“The big story here,” Morgan said at a committee hearing of the Texas House of Representatives, “was the failure of the gas system to perform. ” Irving-based Vistra has 19 generators in Texas with more than 18 gigawatts of capacity, most of which burn fossil fuels.
Its chief executive’s comments deflected concerns that Texas Gas-fired power plants account for more than half of generation capacity in the state’s largely walled off power market. Morgan said problems with gas delivery extended from wellheads that froze to processing plants that lost electricity to pipelines that were unable to deliver enough fuel.