Causes of February storm’s natural gas shortages still debated

“—gas just simply wasn’t available and/or gas prices were too high…”

A U.S. Senate committee was told this week there were lots of causes for the February winter storm loss of electrical power in Oklahoma and other states that make up the Southwest Power Pool. But the hearing made it clear, the problems that nagged Oklahoma and others in the SPP might remain unsolved.

But Lanny Nickell, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of the Southwest Power Pool told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, “—gas just simply wasn’t available and/or gas prices were too high…”

Under questioning by Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Lankford who chaired the hearing, Nickell also offered a call of what needs to be done to avoid the kind of near catastrophe the state faced last winter.

“The gas industry, the electric industry, has to get together at the table and talk, and we haven’t done a good job of that in the past. And that’s why you are hearing and other people are hearing similar comments and similar explanations for why gas didn’t perform.”

Lankford noted the stories of frozen wellheads and the inability to send natural gas for more electricity generation.

“What would you say was the primary cause on the gas failure there for SPP?” asked the Senator.

At SPP, what we know is that there was a lack of fuel supply, and we believe based on information that our market monitor has produced is that it was s combination of two things: gas just simply wasn’t available and/or gas prices were too high,” answered Nickell.

As for the natural gas prices that skyrocketed at the time of the storm?

“I have heard that the lack of supply created the demand. I’ve also heard that the willingness of generators and utilities to pay whatever they could afford to pay in order to reliably serve load also contributed, but I can’t tell you to what extent either of those drove that price as high as it did.”