Texas Freeze’em | Energy Central

Oil Price: “US natural gas and heating oil prices jump on cold snap forecast.” Temperatures in the eastern half of the US are dropping due a polar vortex associated with accentuated southward oscillations in the northern jet stream, which allows arctic air to infiltrate as far south as Texas. Logically, the prices of methane, propane and heating oil [typically oil used only in the eastern US] increase in this circumstance. “Natural gas prices have gone up by 4% since the start of the week, the Financial Times reported today, adding that heating oil prices have added 5%.” Separately, Fox News reported that frigid weather ‘could exert additional upward pressure on prices by curbing supply.’ due to methane gas infrastructure freezing up—even at the wellhead. “Gas prices may yet go higher before the week is over after the Energy Information Administration publishes its weekly inventory report. Analysts surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expect inventories to have shed 131 billion cu ft [of fossil methane gas] in the last week of December.” Meteorologists have warned that this January could be the coldest since 2011—predicting winter storms across most of the country, as the “first large and long-tracking Arctic high pressure area will sink southward across the Plains and impacts Texas early next week,” says AccuWeather lead long-range expert Paul Pastelok “This air mass will continue to follow the storm along the Gulf coast, Tennessee Valley and Southeast between Jan. 8-9.” This sort of climate event can expose vulnerabilities in our energy infrastructure, as happened in Texas in February of 2021, when 3 back-to-back winter storms struck, leaving more than 4.5 million homes + businesses without power, resulting in shortages of water, food, + heat. The Texas Department of State Health Services reported more than 200 deaths, some of them hypothermic children in their beds. Eyes will be on Texas this time as well, but I suspect with increased wind, solar, storage + planning that the Lone Star State will do better this time around.