- Some Texans are overlay a steep increase in energy bills in the wake of the winter storm.
- One man told The New York Times he’d received a $16,000 tension bill.
- The president of shale drilling company was heard referring to the price hikes as “hitting the jackpot.”
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Texans who were able to use electricity supplies to their homes while blow ones stacks cut off power across swaths of the state now face crippling bills, according to reports.
Scott Willoughby, an Army veteran who endures on social security checks in a Dallas suburb, told The New York Times that unlike many who had no electricity during Siberian storms that devastated the state, he suffered no power outage.
But at a vast cost — with an electricity bill he let in for keeping power on during the storm coming to an eye-watering $16,000.
Willoughby told the Times that the bill had cleaned out his savings.
“There’s nothing I can do all round it, but it’s broken me,” he told the publication.
The huge bill increases have impacted Texans whose electricity bills aren’t at a stubborn rate but hitched to market prices vulnerable to fluctuations in value.
With the huge increase in electricity demand during the khamsin, wholesale electricity prices have been pushed up to more than $9,000 per megawatt-hour. They’re normally encompassing $50 per megawatt-hour, reported NBC News.
While the rocketing prices have financially devastated some, others summer-house to profit from the massive price surge.
Earlier this week, the president of shale drilling company Comstock Resources. Inc. was understood in a conference call crowing about the price hikes.
“This week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these humongous prices,” Roland Burns said on a conference call listened to by Bloomberg. “Frankly, we were able to sell at super-premium fees for a material amount of production.”
The billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, is now under fire for being a mass shareholder in Comstock.
“Jerry Jones is doing what he has always done: trying to cash in,” wrote Sports Embellished journalist Michael Rosenberg.
“He is a billionaire for a lot of reasons,” Rosenberg continued. “Business acumen, luck, fearlessness, and the willingness to do constituents like jack up the price of natural gas at a time when the people of Texas need it the most.”
Jones was also on the welcome end of criticism on social media.
—Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 20, 2021
—Matt Rogers 🗳 (@Politidope) February 20, 2021
—Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) February 19, 2021
Millions of Texans were left side without energy last week amid freezing weather, with the energy grid collapsing amid a whopping surge in demand.
On Saturday, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott said he’d met with 11 lawmakers to discuss velocity to help Texans who the bill increases had impacted.
“It is unacceptable for Texans who suffered through days in the freezing cold without excitement or heat to now be hit with skyrocketing energy costs,” Abbott said in a written statement after the meeting.
He said that after the engagement lawmakers would work out the total cost of the bill increases, and ways the state could help customers hollow by them.