August 6, 2018 – Natural Gas Intelligence
Regardless of Weather Stress, Industry Passes Resilience Test, Says Natural Gas Council
By David Bradley
Despite facing three major weather events in just six months, the nation's natural gas industry continues to pass the resilience test "with flying colors," according to a study released Monday by the Natural Gas Council (NGC).
Read the full article here: http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/115333-regardless-of-weather-stress-industry-passes-resilience-test-says-natural-gas-council
The report examines the industry's preparation and actions during three weather events that occurred between August 2017 and January 2018, and their impacts on customers. The events analyzed were Hurricane Harvey, which hit South Texas last August with catastrophic rainfall that shuttered the energy breadbasket of the United States; Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in Florida in September, knocking out power to millions; and January's "bomb cyclone," which produced constraints that sent natural gas prices skyrocketing and destroyed as much as 4 Bcf/d of demand as more coal and fuel oil entered the market.
"Ultimately, the greatest test of resilience is whether commitments can be met regardless of the degree of stress that is caused by a weather event," according to RBN Energy LLC, which conducted the analysis. "As this study demonstrates, the natural gas industry passes this test with flying colors."
RBN attributed the industry's operational reliability and resilience to four characteristics: extensive underground locations of facilities, line pack, network reliability, and physical configuration, which limits the impact of disruptions. In addition, the shift from largely Gulf of Mexico supplies to regionally diverse onshore shale production has "hurricane-proofed" the industry over the last decade, the analysts said.
"Reliability and resilience were demonstrated through the continued service and availability of natural gas despite threatening weather and outages on the electric grid" during each of the weather events, they said. "In the rare instances of natural gas service interruption, the industry demonstrated rapid recovery, thereby minimizing impacts to a negligible amount."
