I believe the unprecedented events in East Texas and Texas as a whole, to our power grid warrants a special letter to the membership to distribute unbiased facts regarding these events. We are a scientific society and we need to be careful not to become embroiled in “political spin”, but we need to have a clear understanding of the facts so we can be part of a constructive dialogue to avoid a repeat of what has occurred in the future. At the bottom of this letter are a series of graphs of power use broken down by energy source for each of the major grids in the US for the period immediately preceding our very cold weather through the very cold temperatures. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the gold standard for energy data in this country, publishes the data. The purpose of this letter is not to discuss the many policy implications but to provide some first order factual analysis of what this data demonstrates.

Thanks to everyone that participated in our January meeting and talk! ETGS has another great talk lined up for February 17 at 12 pm via “Zoom”. Robert Loucks and Chris Zahm will speak on “Geologic overview and characterization of the Upper Cretaceous Austin Chalk Trend, onshore Gulf of Mexico”. I saw a version of this at GeoGulf 2019 and it was excellent. I know we have done a number of Austin Chalk talks, but there is a great deal of research progressing on this play and there is considerable industry interest, so one more and we will then take a break from that topic. Please sign up in a timely manner so we can prepare for the event.

Happy New Year! I hope all had a safe and joyous Holiday Season in spite of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the COVID 19 pandemic is still with us and continues to affect our activities. Fortunately, the vaccines are starting to roll out beyond health care workers and include those in the 1b category, which includes those over 65 or with pre-existing conditions. The good news is some members have already received their vaccination and more are signing up daily.