Well friend @roamer_1 I have to disagree with you on this one; the natural gas in question never belonged to the state to begin with, it belonged to the owner of the mineral rights (I think, @thackney can correct me); I don't see how the state can legitimately interfere in the free decision of owners to dispose of their property as they see fit within existing contract law. Only if those mineral rights were sold to the state should the state be able to determine where the natural gas is sold, and even then existing contracts should be honored. So while I tend to like Greg Abbott, I have to conclude he's wrong on this one and has succumbed to politics of the moment.
Well
@HoustonSam I ain't welded to it - certainly so in normal circumstances. But in extraordinary circumstances, under emergency conditions... well that can be another whole thing. That the contracts are more important than the pipelines going empty to the point of freezing people dying, Well that just ain't right.
However, I am not discounting the responsibility of the individual either. I have already expressed the thought that every household is the first defense, that utilities are ultimately unreliable. They do go down and the individual is inevitably the bag-holder at that point in time. Still, reliance upon those systems inherently means they need to be robust, and the gas companies, not even mentioning the government, should rightly not leave all those folks hanging over contracts. Contracts can be modified after the fact, and regulations can be eased, Especially in the condition of such misery.
And finally, a flaw in your thinking, in that the mineral rights FIRST belong to the people, not the state, and not the purchaser of those rights. It would not be hard to insist, in the face of an emergency, that ALL contracts, sales and rights are contingent upon a reserved right of the people retained in such cases... Very similar to how AK provides a kickback to the people on all mineral sales, though my intent is to merely meet the requirements necessary to keep local pipelines full first, rather than a reimbursement upon sale, as AK does.
This is not thinking that is foreign in the West.
Regarding your specific counter-example, I believe one could argue that hydroelectric power was never privately owned because neither water nor dam was ever privately owned, and the state in fact *can* make the decisions about how that hydroelectric power is sold. But this actually reinforces the authority of your governor to make that decision, although he might have chosen poorly.
Right, but again, the state provided originally, in getting the dams approved, that the people would retain a benefit from allowing the dams in the first place. It is the peoples' resources, not the state's. And unlike your condition, it was ongoing, the people receiving the benefit of low power costs as that benefit.
In your case, I am speaking more to emergencies, and how resources are allotted because of 'acts of God'.
