Uri Fallout: Texas’ Rayburn Electric Is First Co-op To Securitize Uri Debt; Still Expected To Sue

Uri Fallout: Texas’ Rayburn Electric Is First Co-op To Securitize Uri Debt; Still Expected To Sue

David Naylor, Rayburn CEO, signs off on Winter Storm Uri bond. The week of Feb. 7 history was made in Rockwall, Texas. But there was no jubilation: No hats were tossed into the air, no champagne corks popped. Instead, there was a sense of it is what it is. Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative, Inc., a nonprofit electric generation and transmission utility with four distribution member companies, closed on Texas' first cooperative securitization bond, arising out of Winter Storm Uri a year earlier. The bond for $908 million, and rated by Moody's as Aaa (fs), shoulders the debt incurred by Rayburn and its 229, 000 customers as a result of the extraordinary prices allowed by the state's public utility commission and charged by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) for what power was available during the Winter Storm Uri. That storm layered Texas in ice and snow and freezing temperatures for five days, from Feb. 17-22. It also left, according to official counts, 246 people dead – either from freezing to death or from related accidents, such as carbon monoxide poisoning from gasoline generators operated indoors, or fires that got out of hand. During the height of the freeze, ERCOT