A California lawmaker chastised state regulators for letting utility Southern California Gas Co. pull more volumes from the Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility.
Citing low overall storage volumes and increased demand because of cold weather, the company on March 2 requested permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to begin using the Aliso Canyon field more, and the commission agreed on March 3. The facility has been under tight usage restrictions since the massive leak spanning October 2015 to February 2016 at the field, and the CPUC has laid out specific criteria for allowing withdrawals from Aliso.
"The lack of evidence presented to support this decision, the lack of preparation in anticipation of a winter cold snap, and the lack of transparency behind this decision may violate existing law and certainly erode public trust in the CPUC's commitment to safety and transparency," California state Sen. Henry Stern wrote in a letter to the CPUC's executive director.
Stern argued that the commission was too willing to accept SoCalGas' assertions that all the available and necessary demand reduction tactics have been deployed and that there is an imminent risk to reliability — two conditions required by state protocols before the utility can pull gas from Aliso.
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The CPUC, however, said the process has been in keeping with the state protocols, noting that SoCalGas fully utilized its other storage facilities and worked with electric generators to reduce demand prior to asking to increase withdrawals from Aliso.
"The CPUC's March 3 letter that Senator Stern is addressing does not grant open ended utilization of the field," CPUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said March 7. "The CPUC anticipates that gas demand will return to average levels by March 13. The CPUC will do an in-depth review of all of SoCalGas' operating decisions over the past three weeks."
The commission on March 3 cited not only SoCalGas' March 2 letter but also information the company has been supplying to the CPUC's energy division, noting that "it appears that inventories in all of SoCalGas' non-Aliso storage facilities have dropped below or are very near minimum levels" that the state's 2017-2018 winter technical assessment said would be necessary to support reliability.
SoCalGas said it had a total of about 28.2 Bcf of gas in storage and was at risk of fully depleting the inventory in the company's Playa del Rey storage facility as of March 2. The company's three non-Aliso fields — Playa del Rey, Honor Rancho and La Goleta — have a total capacity of almost 53 Bcf.
The lower volumes in the storage fields had begun cutting into deliverability, because low volumes mean low pressures, which slows the process of withdrawing gas, the company said. Without using Aliso Canyon, SoCalGas said its withdrawal deliverability had already fallen by March 2 from 1.12 Bcf/d to 880 MMcf/d and could decrease further to 600 MMcf/d.
The CPUC authorized SoCalGas to begin using Aliso so that the company can maintain — or, better yet, restore — storage levels at the other fields and only until gas demand in the region "returns to average levels." The Los Angeles area, which is in the middle of the utility's service territory, experienced a cold snap during late February and early March, with temperatures as low as the mid-30s Fahrenheit and average temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Normal average temperatures are in the mid-to-upper-50s, according to NOAA.
SoCalGas has been withdrawing small amounts of gas from Aliso in recent weeks and notifying the CPUC, in keeping with the state protocol's requirement that the utility use the field as an "asset of last resort."
Stern contended that there should have been more preparation done before winter and that the risks of using Aliso should be weighed more heavily.
"Aliso Canyon's safety and reliability as an underground storage field remains unknown. Seismic and fire safety reviews have still not been completed. The root cause analysis ordered over two years ago remains incomplete," Stern wrote. "A contrived emergency, justified by an opaque, self-interested rationale by SoCalGas, is no emergency at all."
He requested that the CPUC answer a number of questions, including why certain pipelines in the region were taken out of service at a high-demand time, whether the CPUC Energy Division director had the authority to allow SoCalGas to begin using Aliso more, and what all has been done to curb gas use in the region.
An early October 2017 incident near a compressor station affected two pipelines connecting California to gas supplies, taking about 800 MMcf/d out of service. Another pipe that was out of service during winter 2016-2017 was slated to stay offline until May 2018, according to a state report released in November 2017.
SoCalGas was authorized in mid-2017 to spend $11 million on public outreach to reduce the risk of gas and power curtailments in the Los Angeles area, and the CPUC in May 2017 directed SoCalGas to inject more gas at non-Aliso storage fields to improve gas access.

