Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas publicly split with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick over the issue of who can order the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas Inc. to reprice billions of dollars worth of electricity market transactions that occurred as the power grid began to stabilize in the wake of the deadly, multi-day winter storm Uri.

Officials are now scrambling to stabilize Texas' freewheeling electricity market to prevent more bankruptcies among participants who fell on the losing side of $16 billion worth of transactions priced at the $9,000/MWh legal cap, roughly 300 times the normal rate. The Texas Public Utility Commission maintained the artificial prices from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19 to provide incentives to plants to supply power and disincentives to large industrial consumers to use it as blackouts left millions of residents without electricity and heat for days. The disaster caused more than 50 deaths.

Patrick, a Republican who is also president of the Texas senate, and others maintain the Feb. 15 PUC order to push prices to the legal limit expired Feb. 17 at 11:55 p.m. as the grid came into stability. Patrick in a March 12 letter urged Abbott to "intercede on the issue" and correct what he called a pricing error.

"The fact is ERCOT has the authority to correct the error if they are ordered by the PUC to do so," Patrick wrote to Abbott. "The PUC has the authority to direct ERCOT to lower the price pursuant to Utilities Code § 39.151 (d)."

But Abbott late March 12 disagreed with Patrick in a letter that said, "It is clear to me there is a difference of opinion of whether there was a billing error or there was a deliberate decision to take action to save the lives of Texans in their homes. That issue will ultimately be decided by the courts."

"As a former Texas Supreme Court Justice and former Attorney General, I agree with the position of the PUC Chair about his inability to take the action you requested," Abbott wrote to Patrick. "You asked that I 'intervene to ensure the right thing is done.' The only entity that can authorize the solution you want is the legislature itself. That is why I made this issue an emergency item for the legislature to consider this session."

Abbott's decision to ask the legislature to act comes as a 30-day window to reprice erroneous transactions closes. Market participants also often true-up transactions within a 55-day window to ensure accuracy, and the market monitor has said the actual accounting impact of the storm transactions is roughly $5 billion. Winter storm Uri first hit Sunday, Feb. 14, and began to subside mid-week.

Patrick had also called on Abbott to replace Arthur D'Andrea, the sole member of the PUC, after Abbott fills two vacancies of PUC members who resigned in the wake of the crisis. Patrick had grilled D'Andrea in a March 11 senate committee hearing about the pricing issue. D'Andrea maintained that it was no error to order prices to the cap, and said he had no legal authority to reprice the transactions.

"Mr. D'Andrea's position requires both professional competence and honesty and he demonstrated little of either in the hearings yesterday," Patrick wrote to the governor. "I believe most Texans who watched the Senate Jurisprudence hearing would conclude that D'Andrea should not have full authority over ERCOT or be part of the solution moving forward."

While Abbott stood behind D'Andrea's legal opinion on the repricing issue, he made no mention of D'Andrea's future at the commission. The governor and commissioner have worked together for years. D'Andrea, who defended his work to lawmakers during back-to-back March 11 legislative hearings in Austin, worked as an assistant solicitor general under Abbott when he was state attorney general. D'Andrea then followed Abbott to the governor's office as an assistant general counsel. Abbott in November 2017 appointed D'Andrea to the PUC for a term that ends Sept. 1, 2023.