Fortis getting help from its friends
American utilities have ‘leaned in’ to keep the heat on in B.C. homes
FortisBC is scrounging far and wide to keep natural gas flowing to its customers after a massive fire at a section of pipeline near Prince George Tuesday cut off about 60 per cent of its normal supply.
With one large pipeline still shut down by the incident, the province’s gas distributor is pulling new supply from an existing east-west pipeline, revaporizing liquid natural gas (LNG) stored on Vancouver Island and drawing back gas that would otherwise be headed to the United States.
“When a major artery like this is cut, we have some options to serve customers. We have flexibility to take gas from several points into our system,” said Dennis Swanson, FortisBC’s vice-president of energy supply and resource development.
The company was able to pull additional gas from Alberta through the Southern Crossing Pipeline, which runs close to the U.S. border.
“We also have an interconnection to the south with neighbouring utilities and they really leaned in to help us out,” said Swanson.
Northwest Natural, Puget Sound Energy and Northwest Pipe — which normally receive gas from the Enbridge pipeline — were able to reverse the flow north.
“By operating with stored LNG, they were able to push gas back up into B.C. to help us survive this crisis,” he said.
Fortis also pushed gas from its own Mount Hayes LNG plant on southern Vancouver Island by revaporizing the gas stored there for export and backfeeding it from the Island to the Lower Mainland.
At the Fortis LNG plant, natural gas is cooled until it condenses into a liquid at about 1/600th of its usual volume. It can be stored in its liquid form, loaded for transport from the facilities or converted back to gas and returned to the Fortis distribution system.
Gas at the company’s second LNG plant in Delta is being held in reserve.
“If the pressure in the system drops, we can quickly shoot that one in and keep the pressure to keep as much service going as possible,” said Swanson. “Because it’s smaller, we are using it as our tool of last resort.”
The 47-year-old Tilbury LNG plant in Delta is used to buffer supply during peak demand and to supply industrial customers. The storage tank there holds 17 million cubic metres of natural gas, “enough to keep a community of 12,000 warm for about 45 very cold days.”
Mount Hayes holds 42 million cubic metres of natural gas.
Fortis is in the process of expanding the Tilbury facility, which also supplies LNG for export by ship and by truck. The new storage tanks will hold 40 million cubic metres, providing a substantial buffer in the event of a future service interruption.
There was also a considerable amount of gas stored within the pipelines themselves under pressure, but not in liquid form, said Swanson.
“Because it’s a gas, we can compress it under pressure, which is called line pack,” he said. “You can survive for a while with the extra gas that is in those lines.”
Early Thursday morning gas flow was restored to the undamaged gas lines at the site of the rupture.
“Now that the 30-inch line has been deemed fit for service, our restart plan is to gradually bring the line’s pressure up to approximately 80 per cent of normal operating capacity,” Enbridge said in a statement.
Gas flow will be restored when the line has been tested and pressurized.
“That means we will be able to start getting gas to our customers in the Interior and back down to the Lower Mainland,” said FortisBC vice-president Doug Stout in a video release. “It will take time during the next day or so to get the system back to where it needs to be.”
On Wednesday, the company reported natural gas use provincewide has already dropped by 20 per cent — which helps buy time for repairs to be completed — but further reductions are needed.
The company has asked homeowners to turn off their furnaces and industrial customers such as Howe Sound Pulp and Paper and Parkland refinery to scale back or shut down operations during the shortage.
The cause of the rupture is still under review by six investigators from the National Energy Board, but Enbridge could not say how long that review would take.
A larger, 36-inch line that ruptured Tuesday remains out of service with no time frame for repair, which is limiting the supply of natural gas in the north, southwestern B.C. and Vancouver Island.
Enbridge describes the 2,900-kilometre pipe as the “backbone” of the industry, carrying 60 per cent of B.C.’s total supply and about 50 per cent of the gas consumed in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
About 700,000 customers in B.C. are affected by the shortage. While the supply of gas is stable for 300,000 homes in the Okanagan and the southeast, customers all over the province are being asked not to use their furnaces and to cut back on gas use.
Excess gas in the Okanagan and southeastern B.C. will be routed to the Lower Mainland, Stout said.
Our restart plan is to gradually bring the line’s pressure up to approximately 80 per cent of normal operating capacity.