Natural Gas Drilling Rig
Image Credit: Jessica K Robertson, USGS
Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011 was released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
As background, there has been a shift in natural gas production from offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico into the interior. Energy suppliers and consumers were accustomed to outages during late summer and autumn because of hurricanes, but now they must watch for freeze-offs during winter.
In the cold snap last winter, freeze-offs were responsible for reducing the nation's natural gas production by over 7 billion cubic feet of gas a day. This is equivalent to hurricanes like Katrina or Lee. As you can guess, natural gas disruptions in winter are much more serious than summer.
A “freeze-off,” occurs when water produced alongside the natural gas crystallizes or freezes, completely blocking off the flow and shutting down the well. The report tells, "Freeze-offs routinely occur in very cold weather, and affected at least some of these basins in all of the six recent cold weather events in the Southwest with the possible exception of 1983, for which adequate records are not available. During the February event, icy roads prevented maintenance personnel and equipment from reaching the wells and hauling off produced water which, if left in holding tanks at the wellhead, causes the wells to shut down automatically."
Mmm. You are probably trying to remember. How cold was it? The arctic cold front hit the central and northeastern United States and southern Canada on February 1, 2011, and lasted for several days. Temperatures dropped 40 degrees in parts of Texas. Highs for almost a week were 30 degrees below their normal averages. The arctic front reached down across the nation to the Gulf. Sustained winds were 20 to 25 mph.
Brrr. Here's hoping we don't repeat it.
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