Over the past three years, a wave of new data — and lawsuits — have made the case that the outages were, in fact, a result of market manipulation by some of Texas’s biggest fossil fuel companies...

...The charges aired in court on Monday were a far more limited version of CirclesX’s broader, more explosive claims: For decades, Texas’s major pipeline companies have covertly squeezed gas supplies before cold snaps and hurricanes.

In doing this, the plaintiffs argued, they have driven up the price, and then using the ensuing disaster as a cover to break existing contracts, freeing up their gas supplies to be sold for newly-soaring prices on the spot market.

“Winter Storm Uri followed this playbook,” the suit argues, “and indeed represents the most egregious example of Defendants’ manipulation and their greatest heist yet.”

In this alleged “heist,” the suit contends, the gas companies starved their contracted customers of gas, helping ensure the shortages that led to blackouts, hundreds of deaths and costs of hundreds of billions of dollars.

“Simply stated, the ‘failure to winterize’ narrative is misleading,” the CirclesX lawyers wrote.

“Unfortunately, Defendants’ false narrative has served, until now, to insulate them from scrutiny and accountability.”