For two consecutive winters, cold weather has caused Texas gas production to plunge but the size of those drops depends on who you ask. Days after the most recent chill, state regulators said just 2 per cent of output was lost although independent researchers contend it was more than triple that. Why the discrepancy? Despite being the biggest supplier and consumer of gas in the world’s largest economy, Texas doesn’t track production outages in real time. That’s can be a big problem for the electric grid, which relies on the 24/7 flow of gas to keep the lights on. During the cold snap less than two weeks ago, ... (full story)