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SUPPLY FREEZE: High demand for heat and frozen natural gas wells limiting supply have led to a jump in the market price for natural gas, according to City Utilities.
SBJ graphic by Heather Mosley
SUPPLY FREEZE: High demand for heat and frozen natural gas wells limiting supply have led to a jump in the market price for natural gas, according to City Utilities.

Frigid temps lead to resource-saving measures

Utility companies ask businesses to preserve natural gas in Missouri

Posted online

As temperatures sat in the single digits and snow piled up, energy companies had to react to not only an increased demand for resources but also a shortfall in supply, leading to natural gas curtailments in the area.

In the early morning hours of Feb. 16, Mark Lewellen, owner of Springfield Powder Coating LLC in Ozark, received a text message from his company’s natural gas provider – Spire Inc. (NYSE: SR) – asking him to participate in natural gas curtailment.

Steve Mills, vice president and general manager for Spire’s Western Missouri region, said curtailment practices help combat supply issues and ensure there is enough natural gas to keep homes and businesses heated.

St. Louis-based Spire, which serves customers in Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama, started contacting customers late Feb. 15 as temperatures dropped.

“With the frigid temperatures we’ve had, it’s impacted natural gas supplies across the Midwest, so we had to implement a natural gas curtailment plan,” Mills said.

Decreasing the demand on resources ensures customers are able to continue using smaller amounts to keep their homes heated and with power while preventing outages.

Residential customers were asked to reduce their usage of natural gas by setting thermostats at tolerably lower levels and minimizing usage of gas appliances. For larger commercial and industrial customers, the change can be more impactful.

At Springfield Powder Coating, reducing natural gas usage meant shutting down operations for four days, Feb. 16-19. As part of the powder coating process, a large oven the size of a two-car garage is utilized, and it runs on a lot of natural gas.

“At full tilt, it runs about 1.5 million Btu, which literally will heat somewhere around 65-75 homes,” Lewellen said. “When we turn our oven on, as they say, the lights go down.”

British thermal units measure the amount of heat needed to raise a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Lewellen, a retired engineer, said a typical home is heated with about 15,000 Btu.

Unable to operate without the oven, Lewellen said he shut down the business and sent his employees home for the week and spent the few days working on maintenance and other tasks.

“My work is still sitting there waiting for me, and it’s not a problem for us to come in on the weekend and catch up,” Lewellen said.

Mills said the natural gas curtailment helped supply levels during the extreme weather. Natural gas was in high demand due to the temperatures but there also were gas shortages due to some natural gas wells freezing in different parts of the country, he said.

Suppliers increased prices on natural gas, raising them from $3 per dekatherm to almost $400 per dekatherm, according to City Utilities of Springfield. Dekatherms are units of energy for natural gas, with one dekatherm equaling 1 million Btu.

City Utilities also asked customers to reduce natural gas and electricity usage, implementing rolling blackouts of power and a natural gas curtailment throughout the week.

CU initiated curtailment agreements with several commercial and industrial customers in the area that were able to switch from natural gas to an alternate fuel source, according to a news release. The curtailment was originally implemented until 9 a.m. on Feb. 16 but was later extended to the morning of Feb. 19.

As of the morning of Feb. 18, the Southwest Power Pool had returned its service territory, including CU, to an Emergency Level 0, meaning levels were returning back to normal, said Joel Alexander, manager of media and energy services for CU.

“That doesn’t mean we’re out of this yet, it just means things are improving,” Alexander said. “We still want customers to conserve. That’s why we still want our natural gas curtailment customers to be on that policy right now.”

The customers on CU’s curtailment list represent, on average, 10% of the total demand based on data from the past five years, Alexander said.

At Spire, Mills said officials monitored gas supply levels throughout the week to ensure the gas curtailment could end safely. Spire announced on the morning of Feb. 18 they were ending emergency curtailment in southwest Missouri – where its service footprint covers Greene, Christian, Lawrence, Barry and Stone counties.

“We’re carefully monitoring it, literally minute by minute, watching the system and making sure before we do anything that the supply is there and the demand has gone down,” Mills said.

Mills said implementation of natural gas curtailment is uncommon and generally linked to these types of weather events that lead to more demand and cause issues with supply.

“It’s been decades since we’ve had extreme temperatures like this, and that’s the usual situation where you have to have some sort of curtailment,” he said.

Mills said there will be an impact on customer bills. Higher usage before curtailment coupled with the higher prices on resources will lead to more expensive bills for customers.

“We haven’t been able to quantify exactly what that cost is going to be, but we know bills are going to be higher because of usage and natural gas prices that have increased over this past week simply because of the supply and demand,” Mills said.

In light of the service interruptions, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and members of the Missouri Congressional Delegation on Feb. 18 sent a letter to the chairperson of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking for a review of the natural gas supply, according to a news release.

“We need to ensure there is an adequate supply of affordable energy and natural gas for families, farmers and businesses in Missouri and the Midwest,” the letter reads.

The letter also was signed by Sen. Roy Blunt and Reps. Emanuel Cleaver II, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason Smith, Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Ann Wagner and Billy Long.

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