In bone-dry language, the report “Inquiry into Bulk-Power System Operations During December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott,” explains how the gas pipeline network in New York nearly failed last Christmas when temperatures plummeted during the bomb cyclone. Freeze-related production declines, combined with soaring demand from power plants, homes, and businesses, led to shortages of gas throughout the Northeast. The lack of gas, as well as mechanical and electrical issues, resulted in an “unprecedented” loss of electric generation capacity totaling some 90,000 megawatts. While the lack of electricity was dangerous, the possibility of a loss of pressure in the natural gas network should send a bone-chilling shiver through the sacroiliac of every politician and bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., New York and the Northeast.
The report explains that if the gas pipeline system had failed, the recovery process in New York City would have taken “months.” In addition, the property damage due to damaged water pipes in homes and buildings would likely have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Left unsaid in the report is that the collapse of the gas grid during the period in which temperatures in New York City stayed below freezing would have caused a calamity unlike any other in U.S. history. The cold that lasted from December 23 to December 28 could have resulted in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of deaths. The damage from burst water pipes would have rendered untold numbers of residential and office buildings in New York City unusable.
“The lack of gas, as well as mechanical and electrical issues, resulted in an “unprecedented” loss of electric generation capacity totaling some 90,000 megawatts.”
So the Cuomo brothers, Mario and Andrew both, were purely stupid and personally greedy in their relentless campaign to force the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. And the current NY State Governor Hochul appears to be just as stupid and ineffective as those two. There are times when it seems that New York City was run better when John Gotti was in charge.
Better luck next time.
Do bureaucrats have sacroiliacs?
Do priests have sacerdotaliliacs?
Energy instability is primarily a combination of poor planning/underinvestment and political interference with an assist by natural weather events. A carbon tax won’t change the weather but investing in technology and infrastructure to adapt to external events is money better spent.
For instance, Saskatchewan should develop more natural gas storage if we are going to use it for home heating and electricity generation. We mostly use salt caverns here to store gas but maybe it is time to expand into depleted oil and gas fields (like Alberta). At least Saskatchewan is still able to build provincial pipelines without much interference by Ottawa and environmental protests
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2018/market-snapshot-where-does-canada-store-natural-gas.html
It’s better to have the storage near demand, and unfortunately there are no oil fields of any kind near Regina or Saskatoon. So, salt caverns.
There’s quite a few gas and oil areas in southeastern Sask near Regina. If you drive between Saskatoon and Swift Current there’s old gas fields. Kindersly is another area. If you look at the locations of transgas natgas compressor stations, there’s often old natgas fields. Not sure how many are depleted enough for storage.
Saskatchewan, with its extensive provincial pipeline system, really may not need to have storage that close to demand areas. Besides, natgas demand is high everywhere in the province since we use it for heating, hot water and electricity generation. But, I am more familiar with the electricity side than the natgas system.
Shut the gas off to their homes, oops, roads and airports are closed, no transpo is running, you must remain indoors, for your safety. Create that microclimate, first, results will quickly follow, once reality hits home!
If that’s what it’s going to take to clue these people in, you can’t just switch everything over to renewables in the darkest hours/days and expect them to work..
What will it take to drown the greenies? Unacceptable brown-outs!
And cell phones that do not work and can’t be re-charged. Lessons from Ireland …
Perhaps it is a self correcting problem since progressives and greens tend to herd themselves into metropolitan areas and then vote against any and all reliable energy projects to supply those cities. When the energy systems inevitably fail, they will feel the effects first and more severely. Maybe then they’ll understand the consequences of their actions….
I hope so …. They now have no cheap food, so cell phone nightmares would wake up some of the idiots.
Faster.
Harder.
Next time will be a success for sure.
When the intention is stupidly evil,the results speak for themselves.
It will take freezing in the dark for our “well educated” citizens to wake up.
And when this “Bad Luck” occurs,the most likely result will be the citizens of New York blaming some innocent engineers as the “cause”.
Giving all their parasitic overload a pass for their idiocy.
Are our cities getting too large for the infrastructure to support them? As government idiots try and force everything downward very serious problems will develop. I hope large amounts of hemp will be used to fix the problem, an old fashioned solution to a 21st century problem, stupid politicians. Well that has been a problem for hundreds years and hemp used to be be one of the solutions, it is time to bring it back.
When the nat gas and electrical grids do, finally, go toes up, at least we will still have lamp posts to string up the luddite morons who have brought us to this sad juncture.
Where the author mentions having to manually re-light pilot lights, I think there’s a tendency to think that because your furnace/water heater has a pilot burning, others do as well.
It’s been a long time since I installed a furnace or water heater with a pilot, they’re mostly started with ignitors now, so restarting when there’s gas outage shouldn’t be the problem. If the utility loses pressure throughout the system… those gas pipes will need purging at each and every gas appliance, where you take the gas nipple off at the appliance, turn the gas on and wait for it, then relight a pilot, or test an ignitor. I think places like NYC (like Calif.) will have rules for recapture of partial spent outflows from these pipes and I’ve never used those, nor do I know how much they cost, nor if there are 20k of them for each gas fitter, plumber, or gas appliance tech in NYC to be using every day for months.
Will ConEd pay as well as the linesmen who replaced Quebec’s electrical infrastructure after their infamous “ice storm”? It may be like that, and for months as it’ll have to go neighborhood by neighborhood as the distribution and main lines are the deciding factors.
Some people who may be thought of as “regular home owners” will say they know how to to do this safely, some may even actually know! If they slip up though, “there’ll be signs of errors” lol…
Also, if Joe the retailer needs work done, it’s $140/hour, and if his neighbor Alcindor Alcyndor who is a new American from “over there” the costs may vary and he may have to pay “up front”. Depending.
The downside to those appliance’s with HSI’s is that you need electricity to ignite and maintain the flame – My 60 year old Findlay propane stove (built in Smith’s Falls) with the pilot lights will survive the apocalypses 🙂
If the gov’t hasn’t banned standing pilot flames soon I think it’s only because the current Minister of the Environment doesn’t know what one is.
I’m fine with them, and am a fan of the other Smiths Falls products, Beach tool boxes…
There are some big time Watermelons elected as city councillors in Ottawa.
One of them, Rawlson King, is trying to keep Enbridge from replacing a gas line cuz…net zero globull warming climate emergency boo.
He’s the councillor for the richest ward in the city and the line feeds at least some of the giant houses there.
I wonder how many of these a-holes know what their prick is up to?
Buddy, stupid has been the order of the day most of my life. It is a sad commentary on the society and people when unicorns are still considered a real thing.
The morons in Rockcliffe voted for him – let them reap what they sowed.
Unfortunately, that’s not the only ward affected.
And how many have called a tradesman to turn off their metered connection? Probably just takes a pipewrench. But then I make a habit of asking silly questions.
“First, generating units unprepared for cold weather failed in large numbers. Second, in the wake of massive natural gas production declines, and to a lesser extent, declines in natural gas processing, the natural gas fuel supply struggled to meet both residential heating load and generating unit demand for natural gas, exacerbated by the increasing reliance by generating units on natural gas”
Now I know this is difficult to understand for places that have cold weather, but one might think after the Texas cold weather outage at the start of 2021, they would have been better prepared…
Also, what caused these “massive natural gas production declines”?
“…one might think after the Texas cold weather outage at the start of 2021, they would have been better prepared…”
No. This is New York we’re talking about. The corruption in New York State at every level of state-run and state-regulated systems is -amazing-.
After the ice storms and hurricanes and every damn thing that have cause catastrophe after emergency after nightmare in New Your State, they STILL do not cut the trees around power lines. They just don’t do it. And New York City STILL does not have snow plows. So it is absolutely not surprising that emergency equipment in the gas supply system is non-existent.
As far as production declines, that is more corruption. Guy I know runs a horizontal drilling rig, was involved with a gas well in Northern NY, test run for a big gas facility. Said that the company drilling the well bowed out after the test and left the state, because the regulators literally camped out at the drill site. They would close the operation down if the maintenance guy spilled five drops of gasoline filling the lawnmower.
You tell people you don’t want their business, they say okay and they LEAVE.
Also, just in case anyone was wondering why there is a war on gas appliances in the media, it might be because the gas system is failing because someone stole all the money, and they don’t want anyone to know. That actually makes sense, doesn’t it?
“…one might think after the Texas cold weather outage at the start of 2021, they would have been better prepared…”
Not quite so simple. The EPA has mandated a lot of drivers be electric ,motor driven rather than gas engine (or turbine) driven via tighter emissions/facility permitting rules. So guess what happens to the gas supply when the electrical supply is limited?
Also, the primary way that you make facilities freeze proof is to insulate and heat trace piping. The heat trace is typically electric. Starting to see a trend?
Finally, a lot of the production/compression/treating facilities are purposely located away from population centers because of NIMBYs. This means that roads may not be the best in and out and may not be cleared as fast as main roads if at all. If you can’t get personnel into a facility, they cant take proactive or corrective action to keep the facility on-line.
Unfortunately, it might take a catastrophic loss of human life (as was a potential result in this situation) to finally end the tyranny of the Climate Change totalitarians.
Not how they think. They’ll blame the event on Climate Change and double down on restrictions.
Mike, You fail to realize that “they” don’t have any cognitive abilities. If people cannot think rationally, or even actually think at all, then chasing the climate change unicorns might seem like a good idea!
This is why I live in a rural house. Propane tank, septic field, water cistern. For when the power inevitably goes down there’s a gennie. Power goes down around here all the time.
Most people think those are all bad things, and the price of rural properties reflects it. But if we’re talking about the entire gas distribution system collapsing, and the electrical grid crashing with it, which takes down town water distribution and you can’t buy gasoline… I’m feeling pretty good about my off-grid system.
When this catastrophe happens the usual suspects will blame man-made climate change and demand an acceleration of fossil fuel phase out.
From the same people who also want to ban your BBQ and fireplace.. I don’t think they care about the fallout..
Once natural gas and other fossil fuels are banned, the climate and oceans will be healed and nobody will freeze to death.
That’s some prime sarcasm because so many looney tunes out there believe exactly that verbatim.
Well, gas is subject lengthy catastrophic failures which wind and solar are not. Gas is not a suitable source of power.
Lol wind and solar are subject to frequent failures. Solar fails every night like clockwork.
Sure does, then comes back all bright and glorious, often with a breeze to charge the batteries for TV and microwave cricket spaghettios.
Everything will be fine.
Lay off the dark rum.
Rum wont make you that stupid, that’s weed what done that.
Ya mon, das it. Jamaican no cold.