2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB4384

HB4384 lets a gas utility record specified costs of facilities already in service for later recovery through customer rates.

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Official caption: Relating to the recovery of certain costs associated with a gas utility's plant, facilities, or equipment placed in service.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Darby. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB4384 lets a gas utility record specified costs of facilities already in service for later recovery through customer rates.
The utility may defer three types of costs: carrying costs while recovery is delayed, depreciation associated with the facilities, and their property taxes.
The balance must be included in the commission's existing interim investment-cost recovery mechanism under Utilities Code Section 104.301.
Utilities must make accounting adjustments when the balance is recovered in rates.
The act took effect June 20, 2025, when the governor signed it after the required votes.

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What does it do?

HB4384 lets a gas utility record specified costs of facilities already in service for later recovery through customer rates. This accounting balance is called a regulatory asset. The eligible facilities must not yet be recovered in rates or already deferred to another regulatory asset.

The utility may defer three types of costs: carrying costs while recovery is delayed, depreciation associated with the facilities, and their property taxes. The carrying-cost formula uses the unrecovered plant amount multiplied by the utility’s pre-tax weighted average cost of capital established in the Railroad Commission’s final order in its most recent general rate case. The final bill does not retain the proposed express compounding language.

The balance must be included in the commission’s existing interim investment-cost recovery mechanism under Utilities Code Section 104.301. That mechanism adjusts a utility’s monthly customer charge or initial block rate, with filing, customer-notice, reporting and later rate-case requirements. HB4384 does not set a fixed charge for each household.

Utilities must make accounting adjustments when the balance is recovered in rates. The commission must review the costs in a general rate proceeding, and disallowed recovery is subject to refund with interest. Permission to record a balance is therefore not an unconditional final approval of every claimed cost.

The act took effect June 20, 2025, when the governor signed it after the required votes. It applies only to cost-recovery proceedings begun on or after that date; earlier proceedings remain under former law. The commission was directed to adopt implementing rules within 270 days after the effective date.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill also would have allowed deferral of incremental operating and maintenance expenses not already recovered in rates. The House committee substitute removed that category and expressly added interest to refunds of disallowed costs. Those changes survived into law. The House engrossed and Senate committee operative texts match the House substitute.

The amendment index lists one floor amendment, offered by Birdwell and adopted in the Senate on May 26. Amendment 1 removed the express compounding phrase from the carrying-cost formula and extended the rulemaking deadline from 180 to 270 days. Both instructions appear in the enrolled law. The House concurred May 28, as recorded in the history.

The text index also includes a Senate amendments printing. Its bill body still shows the pre-amendment wording; the attached adopted amendment supplies the changes. It should not be mistaken for the final integrated act.

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

Gas utilities can seek later recovery of eligible costs incurred during the gap between placing facilities in service and recovering their cost in rates. Customers may bear those approved amounts through the rate mechanism. The removal of operating and maintenance expenses and express compounding, together with commission review and refunds with interest, limits the recovery authorized by this particular new section compared with the introduced proposal.

The final listed fiscal note, for the bill as passed by the second chamber, anticipated no significant state or local-government fiscal impact. It assumed administrative costs could be absorbed with existing resources and revenue effects would be insignificant. That governmental-budget estimate does not establish that customer bills are unchanged, and the note does not estimate a household dollar increase.

Review boundary: This explains the enacted accounting and rate-recovery authority and amendment limits, not the outcome of a particular utility’s rate case or whether implementing rules have since been adopted. The bill is not an appropriation and does not guarantee a particular infrastructure improvement.

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.