HOUSTON (Reuters) – Texas energy firms on Friday began to prepare for oil and gas production after days of frozen shutdowns as electric power and water service slowly resumed at darkened oilfields and refineries. It will take several days for oilfield crews to deice valves, restart systems and begin oil and gas production. U.S. Gulf Coast refiners face five- to seven-day restarts with low water pressure continuing to hamper operations even as power is being restored, said people familiar with the matter. Millions of people across Texas shivered in the dark this week after a severe winter storm laid siege to the state, with demand for natural gas spiking and supplies needed to power electric generators and heat homes drying up. Estimates vary, but the unusually cold weather in Texas and the Plains states curtailed up to 4 million barrels per day of crude oil production and 21 billion cubic feet of natural gas, according to analysts. Texas refiners halted about a fifth of the nation’s oil processing amid power outages and severe cold. The freeze offs, which can occur when water in the gas turns to ice, led utilities to call for conservation measures from California to West Virginia. Ford Motor Co halted production in Kansas City, Missouri, because of a lack of natural gas. Mexico, which imports large volumes of natural gas from the United States, experienced blackouts in northern states bordering Texas, with some factories reporting billions in losses on limited natural gas supplies from Texas. Texas on Wednesday ordered gas producers to halt exports needed by state utilities through Sunday, sparking Mexico to call the U.S. envoy to press for natural gas supplies. But in the U.S., the move did not appear to affect deliveries beyond Texas’ borders. California’s power exchange and the MISO, an exchange that handles 15 U.S. states, both said they had not seen any impact. More natural gas will soon be flowing. Chevron Corp and ConocoPhillips have begun restoring shale output, and Chevron will prioritize natural gas production. Texas oil and gas regulators and a DiamondBack Energy executive also reported that power was being restored to west Texas, where oil production was shut by record snowfall and power outages. “The majority of our Permian and Eagle Ford volumes remain offline,” said Conoco spokeswoman April Andrews, referring to the two major Texas shale fields. Conoco, the top U.S. independent oil producer, is ready to bring back full operations across its U.S. operations outside of Alaska once power and other infrastructure outages end, she said. Nick Note: Their is fantasy and their is reality…. I live in reality and make my living taking money from people living in la la land. Reality is the electric car is nothing new. The electric motor is pretty standard fare. the advantage is a electric motor last for ever and is virtually maintenance free. The problem as we all know is the battery. In an electric car it is literally thousands of lithium cells (like in your computer battery) that are linked together. But their is another problem… REALITY is most of the worlds electricity is generated by coal. So your greene winnie electric car basically burns the most polluting fuel known to man….. DIRTY COAL. And the cost of grid storage and distribution will be more then the cost of generation. The wet dream of the grennie winnies is solar and wind to power a world wide electric car fleet. Their is a problem. The grid can not handle the distributive load or generate enough electricity to charge 200 million+ cars in America alone. Oh i almost forgot to mention wind and solar generation cannot do the job. At the very time most people will charge their computer battery cars (night time) is when solar panels go to sleep because their is no sun. And usually the wind dies down at night. Natural gas fired turbines is one solution which the grennies reject. And their is nuclear which glow in the dark hysteria reject out of hand. Which means the green revolution is a fraud. And frozen iced solid wind turbines and failed natural gas systems plus solar panels that do not work worth a shit on cloudy winter days in Texas reveal how fragile the system really is. i have lived off the grin for decades and we come to you from my 100kw installed solar system. I am an expert. My battery cars are 100% charged off of our solar system. I have wired into our greenoie winnie cars with high tech transformers that take the 500 DCV output of the car batteries and reduce them to 48VDC ( which is the voltage my 3 phase inverters run) as part of a complicated system where the car batteries become storage for the excess power my solar cells generate. Let me be clear here the America joke grid and generation capacity cannot support 200 million electric cars. Not now and not in the foreseeable future. Wind does not work… and solar is day time electricity. To hook the US grid to batteries and bulk up on solar panels is a multi trillion dollar endeavor… with no real benefit. For mere billions America could switch to LPG and CNG as a transportation fuel using existing technology and infrastructure. And that will give Scottie time to ramp up the lithium crystals. Oh did i mention their is not enough Lithium in the world to build the batteries to power a global fleet of electric cars.