Natural Gas shortage in California

[dan_s]

From: Reuters

Southern California Gas Co (SoCalGas) has urged customers to reduce natural gas use to help lower the risk of possible gas and electricity shortages due to what it described as severe cold weather throughout the U.S. Southwest.

The notice, issued Sunday night, came as the utility continues to have only limited access to fuel in its giant Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in Los Angeles following a massive methane leak between October 2015-February 2016.

“We did not pull any gas out of Aliso, but we had to draw significantly on other fields to maintain system reliability,” SoCalGas spokesman Chris Gilbride said on Monday.

In addition to residential customers, SoCalGas, a unit of California energy company Sempra Energy, told non-core customers, including refineries and power plants, that they may receive a notice to curtail service.

The independent system operator, which runs the power grid for much of the state, has not yet called on consumers to cut back on electric consumption.

Gas demand spikes in winter due to heating of homes and businesses, while power demand does so in summer when customers crank up air conditioners.

California agencies have said in a report looking at the ongoing outage of Aliso Canyon that SoCalGas could have a tough time meeting a forecast peak demand of 5.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on the coldest days this winter without the facility.

[Orindakid]

And a couple of weeks ago we had this....a gas power plant going bankrupt in California.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-la-pa ... SKBN13V2PY

[dan_s]

When I was at Hess we decided to sell everything we had in the state in 1998 because it was such a pain in the ass to do business there. It is not a "friendly" state for the oil & gas business. I am somewhat surprised that they would not like clean burning natural gas power plants.