Nearly three years after he accused energy companies of reaping billions of dollars illegally from the 2021 Winter Storm Uri, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond hopes he is close to perhaps recovering some of it.
Drummond says the facts are clear, NextEra Energy profited from the sale of natural gas during the 2021 Winter Storm Uri and did so in violation of Oklahoma state law.
On March 19, he personally signed a request for summary judgment in Osage County District Court where a civil lawsuit was filed against NextEra Energy and a number of other defendants on January 9 of last year. The case (No. CJ-2025-00006) was headlined GENTNER DRUMMOND, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF OKLAHOMA VS. SYMMETRY ENERGY SOLUTIONS, LLC, et al.
“The State’s motion focuses on NextEra’s sales to ONG. The State will present evidence of NextEra’s remaining Oklahoma sales at trial on damages. The State accordingly seeks summary
judgment on liability under 12 O.S. § 2056(D), reserving damages for trial.”
Drummond claimed there was no genuine dispute of material fact on liability and the court should grant the summary judgment.
In the 17-page summary judgment request, along with dozens of pages of supporting documents, Drummond asked for a partial summary judgment on liability in favor of Oklahoma and against NextEra Energy marketing, LLC and wants a judge to find “as a matter of law” that NextEra “violated the Emergency Price Stabilization Act”(EPSA) and the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act.
The Attorney General also asked District Judge Stuart Tate, who was assigned the case in January of 2025, to enter an order narrowing the trial to damages, “including the calculation of overcharges, restitution, and disgorgement.”
The filing contended the facts established the violation and that under EPSA, no seller may charge more than ten percent above its last pre-emergency price, yet NextEra charged Oklahoma buyers and “exceeded the statutory ceiling by multiples, not margins.” The attorney general claimed NextEra’s lowest emergency price “was more than six times the fixed-priced ceiling and more than four times the index-price ceiling.” He added that NextEra’s own invoice confirms violations by margins of thousands of percent.
As the filing stated, NextEra’s total Oklahoma sales for February 2021 including gas sold from storage, reached about $884 million and nearly half went to a single buyer—Oklahoma Natural Gas.
It was the high prices paid by Oklahoma Natural Gas that led the utility to take advantage of a soon-to-be passed law by the legislature to create a ratepayer backed bond program in which utilities could pass along the storm costs to ratepayers for the next 25 years. The ONG use of the bonds is also at the center of Supreme Court challenges filed by Reps. Tom Gann, R-Inola, Kevin West, R-Moore, and Rick West, R-Heavener.
“While Oklahoma utilities were paying record prices that would ultimately be passed on to their customers, marketers were trading among themselves at deep discounts,” charged the attorney general’s filing.
The filing continued, “On February 18, the Gas Daily ONEOK index stood at $1,193.16/MMBtu. One ay later, it fell to approximately $13/MMBtu – a 99% drop overnight. The weather did not improve by 99% in one day. What changed was that the emergency ended, and when that window closed the prices collapsed to ordinary trading ranges.”
The attorney general’s summary judgment filing said the “undisputed facts” demonstrate that every element of the EPSA and OCPA claim is satisfied because a declared emergency existed, NextEra sold natural gas during the period and its prices exceeded the ten-percent statutory ceiling by “enormous margins.” The OCPA is the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act.
Further, he explained to the Judge that natural gas was “not exempt” from EPSA in February 2021, but was later included by the legislature after the storm. Only petroleum commodity markets were exempted and natural gas was not added to the exemptions until the 2023 amendment, two years after Winter Storm Uri.
Drummond also made it clear to the judge that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission had no control over the pricing of natural gas during the storm because it had no “statutory authority” over natural gas sales prices. The agency’s jurisdiction covers “oil and gas exploration and production activities” and “not to the pricing of wholesale gas sales by marketers.”
The Attorney General pointed to Commissioner Kim David‘s concurrence on the OCC’s securitization decision when she stated “the OCC has no authority over the Company’s natural gas suppliers or the marketers involved because these are neither transmission companies nor public utilities subject to the OCC’s jurisdiction.”
It was July 2023 when Drummond announced he intended to file suit following several months of investigation into what some determined to be overcharges by numerous supplies. He said firms had “reaped billions of dollars at the expense of Oklahoma families and businesses” during the storm.
“The magnitude of this scheme is staggering and unconscionable,” added Drummond as he vowed to do everything in his power to “return what was taken and to hold accountable those responsible.”
“I believe it is very likely at this point, significant legal action will be necessary to recover billions of dollars for Oklahoma ratepayers. And that is why today, I am announcing my office will solicit proposals to recover billions of dollars for Oklahoma ratepayers,” said the Attorney General.
When he eventually filed suit, it listed numerous defendants:
BP ENERGY COMPANY, Defendant
CONSTELLATION NEWENERGY-GAS DIVISION, LLC, Defendant
SYMMETRY ENERGY SOLUTIONS, LLC,, Defendant
TENASKA MARKETING VENTURES, Defendant
MACQUARIE ENERGY L.L.C, Defendant
SWE MANAGEMENT, LLC, Defendant
CHEVRON U.S.A. INC., Defendant
SPIRE MARKETING, INC, Defendant
ETC MARKETING INC.’, Defendant
NEXTERA ENERGY MARKETING, LLC, Defendant
SEQUENT ENERGY MANAGEMENT, Defendant
SOUTHWEST ENERGY CORPORATION, Defendant
TENASKA GAS STORAGE, LLC, Defendant
TENASKA, INC., Defendant
ETC MARKETING LTD, Defendant
SOUTHWEST ENERGY, L.P., Defendant
CHEVRON NATURAL GAS SERVICES INC., Defendant