POWER August 2018 - 38

NATURAL GAS
4. Adding capacity. Constructing natural
gas pipelines is the easy part; getting
permission to do so can be difficult. In New
England, Kinder Morgan's Northeast Energy
Direct and Spectra's Access Northeast pipeline
projects were shelved due to financial and
political challenges. Courtesy: Creative Commons/Niteshift
troubling
to the U.S. pipeline industry and
inconsistent with the administration's longstanding
goal to capitalize on our nation's
energy abundance to help bring low-cost energy
to American consumers. "
can Wind Energy Association, the Business
Council for Sustainable Energy, Electricity
Consumers Resource Council (ELCON),
Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA),
Energy Storage Association, Natural Gas
Supply Association, and the Solar Energy Industry
Association.
In a joint statement, John Hughes of ELCON,
a group representing industrial electric
consumers, said, " Any action taken by the
Department of Energy today to use 202(c)
and DPA to prop up uneconomic coal and
nuclear plants is unnecessary, anticompetitive
and would increase the price of electricity
to businesses and consumers, resulting in
a substantial loss of U.S. manufacturing capacity
jobs. " John Shelk of EPSA, the lobbying
group for non-utility electric generators,
said, " There was no emergency when coal
and nuclear interests sought federal relief and
there is none today that justifies such unprecedented
executive branch intervention in the
economic life of the country. "
Separately, the Interstate Natural Gas Association
of America (INGAA) hammered
the Trump plan. " There is absolutely no justification
for the extreme intervention in energy
markets suggested in the draft National
Security Council memo, " INGAA CEO Don
Santa said. " Such a move would be bad public
policy, costly to American consumers and
the economy, and legally questionable. "
A second Trump initiative also has the
gas industry spooked. In March, Trump announced
a 25% tariff on steel imports, applied
to Canada, Mexico, and the European
Union. INGAA, representing pipeline companies,
responded that the tariffs would harm
new gas pipeline projects. Santa said, " The
administration's decision to immediately
impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imported
from our long-standing allies of Canada,
Mexico and the European Union is very
38
Santa said that U.S. steel producers aren't
currently able to provide some of the material
needed for gas pipelines. The large-diameter,
thick-walled steel used to construct transmission
pipelines is a niche product with unique
technical specifications and limited domestic
manufacturing capacity, according to
INGAA. " For certain steel products used in
pipelines, there is zero domestic availability
today, " Santa said.
Gas Deliverability. INGAA's complaint
about specialty steel highlights another, localized,
cloud on the gas horizon: regional
gas deliverability problems. The Houstonbased
Institute for Energy Research notes,
" The shortage of natural gas pipelines is
well understood during the winter months
in New England when electricity and natural
gas prices have skyrocketed due to weather
conditions increasing demand and hindering
the availability of supplies. " The problem is
unique to the region, a result of an inability to
overcome differences between gas contracting
practices and the need for new capacity
to serve electric markets.
New England's gas infrastructure is built
around serving heating load. Most of the
year, there's enough gas to supply electric
generation, the secondary market. But when
winter hits hard, industrial and residential users
have preference for pipeline gas. Electric
generators are last in line. The result: curtailment
of gas-fired power and a complex
search for alternatives to keep the lights on.
That search has landed on elderly, inefficient
oil-fired plants to fill the generation gap.
ISO-New England (ISO-NE) and the
distribution utilities have worked hard to
find ways to finance new pipeline capacity
but have failed (Figure 4). Last fall, ISONE
CEO Gordon van Welie told POWER
that the ISO had given up on the idea of
bringing more gas to the region in the face
of its inability to win support for projects
(see " Could Success Spoil ISO-NE? " in the
September 2017 issue). The problem now,
he said, " is how to get efficient electricity
production during winter, assuming we see
no further investment in gas infrastructure. "
He added, " Fuel has to come from
somewhere when the existing pipelines are
constrained. "
Another deliverability bottleneck is in
southern California where a massive 2015
gas leak at Southern California Gas Co.'s
Aliso Canyon underground storage facility
upset the ability to deliver gas in the region.
Hydropower to serve the California Indepenwww.powermag.com
dent
System Operator (CAISO) depends on
precipitation,
especially snowpack. FERC
reported that warmer-than-normal springtime
temperatures melted snowpack faster
than usual, reducing the amount of summer
hydro available. But, its report notes, " natural
gas supply limitations in southern California
this year may affect CAISO's use of its
natural gas generation fleet and present some
risk to CAISO's markets and operations this
summer. " That's because of distribution-level
pipeline outages, limited operations at the
Aliso Canyon storage facility, and state rule
changes reducing the rate at which gas can be
injected or withdrawn from storage.
Cybersecurity. A final, speculative, cloud
on the U.S. gas horizon is cybersecurity. In its
draft on how to keep inefficient coal and nuclear
plants in service, DOE raised the issue
of gas pipeline vulnerability to cyberattacks.
" A robust and secure network of natural gas
pipeline infrastructure is also indispensable
to the security of the nation's electricity system, "
the draft says.
That prompted FERC commissioners Neil
Chatterjee, a Republican, and Richard Glick,
a Democrat, to highlight in an article published
by Washington, D.C.-based The Hill
newspaper, the woeful status of gas pipeline
protections against cyberattacks. Noting the
extensive work undertaken by FERC, with
the North American Electric Reliability
Corp., to harden the electric grid against cyber
threats, Chatterjee and Glick said, " The
U.S. has no comparable standards for its network
of pipelines. "
The authority to protect pipelines from attacks
rests with the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA), an arm of the Department
of Homeland Security, which spends
hundreds of millions of dollars and employs
thousands of workers to screen airline travelers.
Chatterjee and Glick said, " In May 2017,
TSA confirmed that it had just 6 full-time
employees tasked with securing the more
than 2.7 million miles of natural gas, oil and
hazardous liquid pipelines that traverse the
country. Moreover, despite having the authority
to enforce mandatory cybersecurity
standards, the TSA relies on voluntary ones. "
The two FERC commissioners said,
" Given the high stakes, Congress should vest
responsibility for pipeline security with an
agency that fully comprehends the energy
sector and has sufficient resources to address
this growing threat. The Department of Energy
(DOE) could be an appropriate choice:
It is the Sector-Specific Agency for energy
security and recently created its own cybersecurity
office. " ■
-Kennedy Maize is a long-time energy
journalist and frequent contributor to
POWER.
POWER | August 2018
http://www.powermag.com
POWER August 2018

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