How does Canada’s gas infrastructure deal with this? I don’t know the details, but it seems pretty clear to me that it’s possible to make gas infrastructure operate in temperatures like those found in Texas, even for months on end.

During the late 80s my dad ran Maxus Calgary office later sold to Kerr-McGee. So in Calgary the Texas temperatures would not even be considered cold. This storm dropped Calgary temps to the -20Fs with wind chills in the -55Fs (I did not even check the fields which are further north). Pretty common when I grew up there. Oil and Gas did fine.

I think the answer here is alternate capacity. Canada gets a relatively small portion (11%) of its energy from natural gas, with no province exceeding 21% (Alberta). On aggregate, most energy generated in Canada is renewable.

Many of our homes are heated with gas furnaces and gas water heaters. Works well into -40. I never even thought got about it.

Yes, but realistically natural gas is the standard for home heating here in Ontario at least (and I assume most of Canada) and our gas infrastructure does just fine through winter.

> I'd love to see the engineering proposal to "winterize" ... a thousand miles of supply pipelines.

That isn't really what's needed. If I understand the problems with the gas supply in these events, the issue is the wellhead freezing off due to the high water vapor content in the gas.

Why would they fall below 20F? Aren’t they underground?