alt Hacker NewsYou're technically right about ERCOT's limited role in gas pricing and the regulatory distinctions. But ERCOT did have some direct failures beyond just being a scapegoat, like ignoring federal winterization warnings, the $16 billion overcharging scandal where they kept prices at maximum for two days after outages mostly ended, and poor crisis communication. Even if PUCT and the Railroad Commission should have mandated better reserves and winterization, ERCOT still mismanaged what was within their control.
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I never said ERCOT did not have failures. I'm in the industry and have been massively critical of ERCOT for caving to politics rather than following market rules when they arbitrarily decided to keep the market at the cap. PUCT actually had final say on repricing those hours and chose not to.
ERCOT also didn't have the authority to implement winterization recommendations from the 2011 report outside of the already existing NERC standards. You can blame the PUCT for that or blame FERC for not actually updating those standards until 2023.
However, you still seem to have missed (and demonstrated) my point by referencing Energy Transfer -- they are a midstream company who made 99% of their profits off of NG not power. Conflating their profit with ERCOT's power prices is the problem. People refuse to educate themselves on the difference between gas and power markets, so the TRC and its massively influential O&G lobbyists have made zero changes to the intrastate gas network since the winter storm. Why? Because every layman who has read a few articles and thinks they're an expert is solely focused on ERCOT.
The entire point of Texas having it's own grid is to ignore Federal guidance. If we were going to follow it, we'd just add more areas of the state to the east & west grids. Which Texas is already connected to, just in limited areas.