If natural gas service is interrupted, customer shutoffs could last months

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Grassroots Information Coordination Center (GICC) : One Thread

Published Friday, Jan. 26, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News

If natural gas service is interrupted, customer shutoffs could last months BY STEVE JOHNSON Mercury News If PG&E is forced to cut off natural gas to its customers -- which it says could happen within weeks -- thousands of homes, hospitals and others could lose heat and hot water and use of their stoves for months, the utility has warned state regulators.

Once gas is cut off, PG&E workers would have to visit each home and business to restart the pilot lights.

``If vast numbers of customers lose service, it could take weeks, if not months, before all service is restored,'' according to documents filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.

PG&E has been warning of gas cutoffs for weeks, because its suppliers are increasingly nervous about dealing with the financially imperiled utility. It's unclear whether the state would allow that to happen, but a gas cutoff to thousands of customers would have many more serious consequences than the rolling blackouts of recent days.

Unlike the situation in an electrical blackout, getting natural-gas customers back on line is far more complicated than simply flipping a switch. The reason PG&E workers would have to restart the pilot lights is that it's too dangerous to have customers do that themselves, utility officials point out.

``PG&E's gas service personnel, working in conjunction with personnel lent by other regions and states, could restore service to only approximately 10,000 to 20,000 of PG&E's 3.9 million customers per day,'' according to the papers.

While some big electricity customers have backup generators, few businesses, homes or even emergency agencies have backup supplies of natural gas. That could have ``catastrophic effects,'' the documents explained, because ``hospitals, government agencies and industrial users . . . would have to cease operations.''

Maintaining pipeline pressure so that gas would continue to flow elsewhere could make life even more miserable. To prevent what the documents term ``a total system collapse,'' PG&E might have to shut off gas ``to entire cities or counties'' in areas that are farther from gas pipelines.

Cutting off gas in some areas to preserve the integrity of the overall system is akin to applying a tourniquet to a severed artery, said Kirk Johnson, director of gas systems operations for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Valves would be turned off on major gas lines, affecting up to 100,000 customers at a time. He said areas farthest away from the main pipelines -- including San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Fresno -- would be shut off first and put back on line last.

Because a gas pipeline runs through Milpitas, anyone living in Santa Clara County would probably have gas shut off only after the more remote population centers were hit. But given the company's dwindling gas reserves and the prospect that suppliers might stop selling to the firm in the near future, PG&E officials say it's possible that Santa Clara County customers and many more could be affected.

``For residential customers who lose gas service, home furnaces, stoves and water heaters would shut down,'' according to the documents. ``Customers, particularly the young and elderly, would face potential health impacts from the lack of heat, hot water, cooking facilities and other services for a significant period of time.''

Many PG&E customers have lost gas service before, for example after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. But Johnson said he didn't know of any utility that had ever cut off hundreds of thousands of customers at one time.

To provide temporary help to PG&E, the Bush administration Tuesday ordered out-of-state gas suppliers to continue selling to the utility until 3 a.m. Feb. 7. But after that, federal officials have said, the order won't be extended.

In further hopes of appeasing its suppliers, PG&E has asked the Public Utilities Commission to give those companies priority so PG&E can pay them ahead of other companies, including those that sell electricity. Moreover, PG&E is seeking the commission's approval to have another utility, Southern California Gas Co., buy gas for it on an emergency basis.

But it's unclear how much help that priority billing arrangement would provide. And SoCalGas officials have opposed the idea of being PG&E's financier, fearing they won't be repaid. ``Placing SoCalGas in the position of banker when the risk of total loss is almost a foregone conclusion is simply unconscionable,'' SoCalGas officials have said in an official response to the commission.

While SoCalGas has questioned the severity of PG&E's natural gas problem, Marcel Hawiger, an attorney specializing in natural gas issues for the Utility Reform Network (TURN) in San Francisco, believes PG&E and its gas customers are in real peril.

``That can lead to a very dangerous situation,'' he said. ``We're taking this very seriously.''

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/gas26.htm



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 26, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ