Cold pinching off natural gas supplies to San Diego

BY ONELL R. SOTO in SignOn San Diego Production shutdowns due to cold weather in Texas and the Rocky Mountains have led San Diego Gas & Electric to require big users of natural gas to cut back. Everyone is asked to save electricity and natural gas if they can, spokesman Art Larson said. "We are calling for both natural gas and electric conservation through the curtailment period," he said. The mandatory cutbacks took effect at 3 p.m. and affect 88 large customers such as power plants and manufacturers, which have agreed to cut use in exchange for lower rates. Most of SDG&E's 845,000 customers, including all of its residential users, haven't been cut off. It's unclear when natural gas production will return to normal, Larson said. "This is an hour-by-hour day-to-day situation," he said. Two pipelines are affected, El Paso Natural Gas Company and Transwestern Pipeline . "Based on current supply shortfalls caused by extreme cold temperatures and power outages in the production areas connected to the EPNG system and current demand on the delivery side of the system, EPNG does not expect conditions to improve over the next 24 hours," El Paso said on its website . "Operators and production plants are still having issues bringing facilities back on line." Natural gas production Thursday was down 8 percent from a week earlier, just as cold weather also led to a spike in demand, trade publication Platts said in an online story. "There's a pretty sizeable amount. The cold has shown a large effect in more than just Texas," it quoted analyst Matt Marshall . "We are seeing freeze-offs or lower production in the Rockies, the Anadarko [field] in Texas and Oklahoma, East Texas and the Texas Gulf Coast ." Without proper safeguards, water in natural gas can freeze in cold weather, said Bill Gwozd, gas analyst with Ziff Energy, a consulting firm. In places used to extreme cold, like Canada, producers pump anti-freezing compounds in the wells. But in places that don't get such cold weather very often, those expensive methods aren't installed because they won't be used enough to justify the cost. When it warms back up in the middle of the country, the crisis should ease, Gwozd said.

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Cold pinching off natural gas supplies to San Diego

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