Texas’ Winter Storm Greatly Profited Energy Companies, Gov. Abbott Donor Among Biggest winners

Not everyone lost during Texas’ fatal winter storm and as power provision fell, huge companies like Energy Transfer LP saw skyrocketed gains from their gas prices.

Led by renowned billionaire Kelcy Warren, a well-known donor of Gov. Abbott’s campaign,  Energy Transfer became the biggest outage winner by managing to operate around the clock during the storm in February, providing natural gas when most sources failed.

As reported by Bloomberg, the company saw a positive earnings impact from the extreme weather of about $2.4 billion and raised its full-year earnings guidance to as much as $13.3 billion, from up to $11 billion previously. The stock jumped as much as 4.9% in after-hours trading.

Given that Energy Transfer was able to transport considerable amounts of gas to different facilities across Texas, its co-chief Marshal McCrea told investors that Energy Transfer “was able to benefit”, capitalizing on “very strong commodity prices”

However, this energy giant is only part of a list of both energy suppliers and natural gas companies that benefited from the tragedy, many of which were also the subject of lawsuits over alleged inflated prices.

Roland Burns, chief executive and chief financial officer of Comstock Resources -a shale drilling company that profited from the natural gas demand surge- told investors that the week of the storm had been “like hitting the jackpot”.

According to the Intercept, Macquarie Group, an investment bank that is the second-biggest physical gas supplier in the U.S., which also owns Griddy, a residential energy utility, reported a windfall of $210 million from the swing in gas and electricity prices.

The growing list of companies that also experienced benefits from the storm includes pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Inc. and BP PLC., among others.

In the aftermath, Energy Transfer was sued by CPS Energy, a Texas utility, for allegedly charging a natural gas price more than 15,000% higher than normal. They rejected the claims.