Sooo....there's a lawsuit in Harris County which alleges that the 2021 Icepocalypse and power outages shitshow was a result of market manipulation by gas companies to get more profits. Interesting read. I'm sure it will go nowhere because in this state O&G companies own our legislature.
Remember that CFO of the O&G co backed by Jerry Jones saying tha they "hit the jackpoint" when the the price of MWh hit $9K a few days after the blackout?
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4896585-texas-gas-manipulation-lawsuit-uri/
Lawsuits allege deadly 2021 Texas blackouts were an inside job
Those companies, plaintiffās lawyer Andrew Gould argued on Monday, ādiverted natural gas before winter, to create artificial scarcity ā thus driving up the price.ā
The defendants in the case include nearly three dozen major Texas gas extraction, pipeline companies and banks: Companies like CenterPoint Energy, BP, Energy Transfer Partners and Morgan Stanley.
The Hill has reached out to these companies, but only CenterPoint responded, to say that it does not comment on pending litigation.
But on Monday, company lawyers argued that even if the claims were true, the Harris County courthouse didnāt have jurisdiction, because the 2021 state legislative session had established a process which, ultimately, ruled that the sky-high profits by the defendants were fair.
The plaintiffs ācould have participated in that regulatory process, and could have raised all the complaints that theyāre raising now about utilities,ā Weston OāBlack, an attorney for CenterPoint, said on Monday.
Had they missed that opportunity, OāBlack argued, the only other means of challenging those conclusions was to do so in Travis County district court ā an opportunity that has now expired.
But CirclesX attorneys charged that the harm to Texans had happened long before that legislative process began. Its suit comes on the heels of courts in Oklahoma and Arkansas finding market manipulation by pipeline companies during Winter Storm Uri ā as well as a wave of other suits that allege manipulation in Texas.
It also follows widespread, bigger-picture allegations of market manipulation and racketeering by the oil and gas industry ā like the July lawsuit by the city of Baltimore that argued oil and gas driller pioneer had illegally conspired with foreign governments to inflate the price of oil and gas.
The charges aired in court on Monday were a far more limited version of CirclesXās broader, more explosive claims: For decades, Texasās major pipeline companies have covertly squeezed gas supplies before cold snaps and hurricanes.
In doing this, the plaintiffs argued, they have driven up the price, and then using the ensuing disaster as a cover to break existing contracts, freeing up their gas supplies to be sold for newly-soaring prices on the spot market.
āWinter Storm Uri followed this playbook,ā the suit argues, āand indeed represents the most egregious example of Defendantsā manipulation and their greatest heist yet.ā
In this alleged āheist,ā the suit contends, the gas companies starved their contracted customers of gas, helping ensure the shortages that led to blackouts, hundreds of deaths and costs of hundreds of billions of dollars.
āSimply stated, the āfailure to winterizeā narrative is misleading,ā the CirclesX lawyers wrote.