Who wins in a predatory market? The wolves, naturally

No one forced these suppliers to charge $622.78 per unit for a product that sold for about $2.50 just 12 days earlier.

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Columnists

September 27, 2021 - 9:22 AM

A weeklong cold wave in February sparked an energy crisis which drove the price of natural gas to 200 times its price a few days before. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)

The billion-dollar question of who got rich from the February cold wave has been answered, despite the best efforts of the state’s regulatory commission and our largest natural gas utility to keep that information secret.

Need a hint? Those who made bank were rich already.

It wasn’t scrappy small entrepreneurs who rolled up their sleeves and worked extra hard to make sure your house stayed warm. Your neighbors aren’t likely to be among the lucky few who, in a chaotic and unpredictable wholesale energy market, were able to keep the natural gas flowing at rates that peaked at 244 times normal. But your neighbors and you, as Kansas consumers, will be paying the heating bill for that unexpectedly cold week in February for years to come.

It’s like we all had one of those household catastrophes that sometimes comes along — the transmission in your car goes out, the sewer line in the back yard has to excavated, the roof starts leaking — and you’re short on cash, so you use plastic to keep things running at home. But imagine you had no choice of who to call for repairs, what they would do, or even what credit card to use. That’s what happened to all of us because the wholesale natural gas market is unregulated, with no circuit breakers to protect us from disaster pricing.

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