Blame flowed upstream, but never reached a destination in Monday's field hearing of a US Senate committee researching the causes of gas and electricity outages that occurred in early February in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat-New Mexico, convened the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which he chairs, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His agenda was to investigate the causes of gas outages for more than 28,000 New Mexico Gas customers, which lasted several days, and to assess the reliability of the regional energy infrastructure. The only other senator present was Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, who is not a member of the committee.
US Representative Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat-New Mexico, said, "It seems clear that decisions made by Texas utility entities did impact New Mexico gas customers."
But John Dumas, director of wholesale market operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said he could not say whether rolling blackouts on February 2 caused a loss of natural gas supply to New Mexico. He noted that while ERCOT told transmission companies to shed load because a winter storm had knocked out about 50 generating units, ERCOT did not tell transmission companies which locations to turn off.
George Schreiber, president and CEO of Continental Energy Systems, parent of New Mexico Gas, said, "These disruptions wouldn't have happened if upstream sources of natural gas had met their commitments."
Dumas said ERCOT did receive reports that gas compressor stations had lost power during the rolling blackouts, but he did not know if these had an effect on gas supplies in New Mexico. In Texas, gas compressors and processing units are not considered critical infrastructure to which power should be maintained in an emergency.
But Gerry Cauley, North American Electric Reliability Corporation president and CEO, said, "If we haven't learned the lesson by now that gas compressors are a high priority for electricity supply, we should [know it] going forward."
Janice Parker, El Paso Western Pipeline Group vice president for customer service, said her system had some compressing units in New Mexico lose power, but she did not tie it to ERCOT's rolling outages. El Paso Western Pipeline Group, and Transwestern Pipeline, which also had a witness at the hearing, provide the system to transport natural gas in New Mexico, but do not supply the gas itself. No natural gas supplier had a witness at Monday's hearing.
Jack Torres, mayor of Bernalillo, New Mexico, expressed bitterness about the lack of communication -- and the inaccuracy of it -- from New Mexico Gas. For example, he said he received conflicting reports about how long the outage would last and how many technicians would be dispatched to his community to help relight pilot lights.
"I naively believed that I could accept what was told to me was true," Torres said. "Our town was stepped on by New Mexico Gas."
Schreiber said his company had expected more gas to arrive in the pipeline sooner.
"The problem was that additional supplies of natural gas were never delivered [as expected]," he said. "That has never before happened in the history of New Mexico Gas or its predecessors to this extent."
Torres and other community leaders questioned the wisdom of cutting off their low-income, rural communities, when it takes more people more time to restart their gas service than it would in a more urban area.
"When the next perfect storm should hit, are we going to be the convenient community that is chosen to be cut off?" Torres asked.
Schreiber said his company had to act quickly to shut off gas to customers to avoid causing a more widespread emergency. New Mexico Gas is now working to install more valves to ease compartmentalization of gas demand in an emergency.
The company is also looking for appropriate geologic formations where it can store natural gas in New Mexico, Schreiber said.
"We fully agree we could have done things better," he said.
But he added that getting the risk of an outage to zero could cost "millions and millions of dollars."
