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Centerpoint starts adding natural gas utilities surcharge to customer bills - What's Your Point?

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Published  November 19, 2023 12:35pm CST
What's Your Point?
FOX 26 Houston

$3.5 billion debt lands on Texas ratepayers' shoulders

Texans are facing the fallout of a $3.5 billion debt from the disastrous Winter Storm Uri, with a surcharge added to every natural gas bill to settle the debt over the next 16 years.

Houston - Looks like the time has come for we, the public, to start "paying the piper" for our elected leader's poor planning and governmental incompetence.

I’m talking about the surcharge tacked on to every Texas ratepayer's monthly natural gas bill, to settle a $3.5 billion debt racked up by power utilities during 2021's disastrous winter storm Uri.

 A fragile power grid and a market designed to exorbitantly reward well-positioned energy traders during extreme scarcity have combined to punish everyday Texans for at least the next 16 years. 

Clearly, I’m not too happy about paying an extra $50 bucks a year for what could be the rest of my life - for someone else's highly preventable misjudgments and mistakes.