Texas (Wasn't that the home of ENRON?)

Not at all on my agenda of Important Things to talk about (e.g., Nashoba), but someone needs to say it

Texas seems like a third world country … due to a snow storm. I’ve lived in Northern OH, IN, and in Southern MI. We somehow survived every winter for MONTHS, not just a few days as do do people in Northern Michigan, Canada, and Russia.

What’s happening in Texas is being SPUN totally out of control. For example, many are blaming the frozen windmills and calling Renewables into question even though wind only provides 23% of Texas’s Energy; the majority of the rest of the energy comes from Natural Gas and a third less than that from Coal.

Texas is the state that leads the country in Natural Gas production, and exports it all over the country and even liquifies it and exports it overseas in the form of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas). The U.S. is presently sanctioning any country or company supporting the completion of the construction of the NordSteam2 Natural Gas Pipeline from Russia to Germany, because Germany should not be be reliant on Russia (who has provided Natural Gas to Germany during the winter for decades with no problems no matter how cold it gets in Siberia) but rather rely upon more expensive Texas Liquified “Freedom Molecules”. And Russia doesn’t jack up the prices by a factor of 300 just because it’s a cold winter and Germany needs more or else people would freeze to death.

Did Texas suddenly run out of Natural Gas?

How can we reliably provide Natural Gas to Europe if we can’t even reliably provide it to Texas, where it is produced ?

This wasn’t a failure of Renewables or Technology. It’s not a Failure but an example of the Success our “Financializing of Everything": there’s a FEW people making lots of money right now. Normally wholesale electricity is marketed at about 30 $/MW-hr; right now, if a small retail distributor of energy did not hedge or contract for just the exact right amount of energy it needed and needs a bit (or a shitload) more, it needs to pay 9000$/MW. So, a lot a small retail distributors are caught in a Catch-22: they know their customers need more energy than they contracted for at 30$, but they can’t buy any more at the wholesale level unless they pay 9000$, which would either drive them into bankruptcy, or they’d have to raise their customers’ bills for this month by a factor of 300 which they can’t do because of “price controls”. And so wholesale producers aren’t producing more because the distributors are refusing to buy any more at the “Fair Market Rate” that’s 300 times higher than it was last week.

Do your really think, that overnight, for some reason, it costs 300 times as much to run the natural gas power plants as it did yesterday?

This is NOT Capitalism, or Free Enterprise. This is Financialization of our economy. Call it Enron 2.0.

Hell, maybe this country does need a “Reset”. But not the one being forced down our throats from the elites. Let’s at least have a Conversation and not Censor anyone not parroting the Narratives.

Are there any Adults left in the room ? I think not. Certainly no Adults in Government or the Mainstream Media.

TimE.