Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., is calling for federal investigations into possible price gouging of natural gas in the Midwest, which also suffered extreme cold and outages last week.
Smith said natural gas spot prices spiked as high as 100 times normal levels, forcing high costs upon utilities and other natural gas users, many of which were passed on to customers.
In a letter sent Saturday to federal regulators, Smith said the price spikes harm consumers and also “threaten the financial stability of some utilities that do not have sufficient cash reserves to cover their short-term costs in this extraordinary event.”
The letter was obtained by the Associated Press and was sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other agencies.