The natural gas outage that blighted Northern New Mexico six months ago could have been prevented, according to a joint investigation released Tuesday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
The report states the principal cause of the outage was a decline in gas production due to freezing at well heads, icy road conditions and rolling electric blackouts in Texas. But the report raises questions over whether the facilities affected should have been better prepared for the February cold snap.
The report states that similar incidents have occurred in the past including in January 2010, February 2008 and December 2006.
“While these declines rarely led to any significant curtailment, electric generators in 2003 did experience, as result of gas shortages, widespread derates and in some cases outright unit failure,” the report states. “It is reasonable to assume from this pattern that the level of winterization put in place by producers is not capable of withstanding unusually cold temperatures.”
Commission Enforcement Office Director Norman Bay said approximately 50,000 people lost utility services in the region, including as far away as Tucson and Sierra Vista, Ariz.; however, most of those affected were in Northern New Mexico, where some people waited up to a week for gas service to be restored.
The San Juan Basin, which is one of the region’s two main gas supply basins, was performing at 52 percent of its production output due to wells freezing, while mechanical problems were kept to a minimum, the report states.
Most gas suppliers in the region have implemented winterization procedures designed for low temperatures in the 20s, the report states. The National Weather Service reported temperatures in Northern New Mexico dropped into the single digits preceding and during the gas outage.
Supplies into the El Paso Natural Gas Company’s pipeline receipt points, which are all gathering and processing plants, were also affected by the cold, according to the report. Transwestern Pipeline, which also serves the state, did not experience as much difficulty, the report states.
Bay recommended state legislatures, regulatory authorities and gas companies in the Southwest try to implement new supply standards for area producers and “to determine whether minimum uniform standards for the winterization of natural gas production and processing facilities could be adopted to improve the reliability of supply during extreme cold weather.”
Neither agency that conducted the investigation have jurisdiction over gas supply.
The full report can be viewed on the Rio Grande SUN’s website by clicking on the “City of Española Public Documents” link under the “Our Government” tab.