Texas Oil, Gas Ready For Winter

(Austin, TX) — Nine months after an arctic blast knocked out power to much of Texas, the state’s energy industry says it’s ready for winter.

Todd Staples, who heads the Texas Oil and Gas Association, says there have been many lessons learned. The February power outages caused the deaths of as many as 700 people. State lawmakers passed legislation that requires power plants to weatherize their facilities against extreme weather conditions. There is a December first deadline to submit a report describing what they have done.

Staples says a big part of the changes deal with communication, which were an issue as the temperature dropped. He adds that Texas has an abundance of natural gas in storage.