The major U.S. natural gas trade group is cautioning that it is too soon to say why gas plants went offline in Texas, one of the major factors driving massive power outages in the state amid freezing temperatures.
“We don’t actually know why they went offline just yet,” said Richard Meyer, the American Gas Association’s managing director of energy markets, analysis, and standards. The American Gas Association represents energy companies that deliver natural gas.
Meyer noted there are a number of possible factors at play. That could include declines in gas supply flowing to those plants as gas is prioritized for heating demand, operational problems at the plants due to the cold weather, and issues with market incentives from the Texas grid operator.
“All we know is that these plants went offline” and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator, asked utilities to curtail power to balance the grid, Meyer said. “I am still waiting for more insight as to why those thermal plants, and the natural gas power plants, in particular, went offline when they did.”
That insight could come over the next few days, as ERCOT, federal regulators, and state officials all examine events in a post-mortem. Right now, however, Texas is still trying to get a handle on the situation.
More than 3 million Texans were still without power Tuesday afternoon, according to online tracker poweroutage.us. ERCOT officials said late Tuesday as much as 30 gigawatts of natural gas, coal, and nuclear power remain offline.
Dan Woodfin, a senior director for ERCOT, told Bloomberg that the bitter cold temperatures have frozen fuel and instruments at natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants, forcing them offline. The cold weather has also put pressure on natural gas supply, Woodfin said.
According to a white paper from the Department of Energy, natural gas production in the U.S. south-central region, including Texas and other high-producing states, was around 6.3 billion cubic feet per day lower Tuesday due to freezes at wellheads and processing plant outages.
The outages account for around 30% of the region’s production and roughly 7% of total U.S. gas production, the Energy Department added.
Meanwhile, demand for natural gas, especially for heating, has spiked. Sunday and Monday set a record for the highest two-day deliveries of natural gas, the American Gas Association said.
Natural gas flows to power generation, too, have been around “peak summer load,” levels Texas would expect to see in the middle of July or August when people are blasting their air conditioners, and not in the middle of winter, Meyer said.
Meyer stressed that while there have been power outages, especially in Texas, there haven’t been major natural gas heating system outages, even with the increased demand for heating.
Already, federal regulators and Texas officials have announced investigations into the power outage crisis in the state to look at electricity grid reliability and the system’s failure to handle the extreme winter weather.
“No matter what energy power market structure you’re operating in, this event speaks to the need for accounting for energy system resilience as part of planning,” Meyer of the gas group said. He advocated that all resources, including natural gas, have a role to play in ensuring fuel supply and power are available during extreme weather events.
“The natural gas distribution system is quite literally designed to meet peak winter demand, and what we’re seeing is that system is stepping up right now during this cold wave,” Meyer added. He pointed to natural gas storage ramping up in a significant way to fill gaps caused by declines in production.
Environmentalists, however, are suggesting the Texas events cast doubt on the ability of natural gas to enhance the electricity grid’s resilience to extreme events.
“In the longer term, the cleaner, reliable solution will be to wean Texas and the country off of gas and electrify the economy with renewable energy,” said John Moore, director of the Sustainable FERC Project, in a blog post.
“As Texas is now showing, and as we see elsewhere in the country, we risk over-dependence on carbon-emitting gas for both power and heating,” Moore added.
