It hasn’t happened in Oklahoma, but at least two lawsuits were filed against utilities over the historic power failure in Texas. Both involved some of the same providers who operate in Oklahoma.
One of the suits is against CenterPoint Energy, the Houston-based provider that is also a main supplier of natural gas in Oklahoma.
CenterPoint Energy and Texas power-grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas were targets of the first of many lawsuits expected. They were sued in Harris County by resident Donald McCarley who alleged ERCOT failed to properly weatherize the Texas electric infrastructure following earlier cold-weather power outages.
“Texas had practically identical failures in 1989 and 2011 that resulted in exhaustive reports and recommendations,” McCarley’s lawyer Patrick Luff said in a statement. “This was an emergency solely because of a failure to plan and learn previous lessons.”
On Friday, a lawsuit was filed in Nueces County and it named American Electric Power Company, parent of the Public Service Company of Oklahoma. The multistate electric utility serves parts of Texas.
