Emergency shutdown at a natural gas storage facility in Washington state threatens mass blackouts.
By Alexander C. Kaufman
Jan 13, 2024
In this Thursday, photo the Space Needle is seen in view of still standing but now defunct stacks at the Nucor Steel plant in Seattle.
VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
A massive storage facility in Washington state serving the natural gas network that provides electricity and heating fuel to millions of Americans from the Pacific Northwest south to New Mexico went down Saturday.
The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in Lewis County, roughly two hours south of Seattle, suffered a complete outage, triggering an emergency on the 1,500-mile Northwest Pipeline that ships gas to power plants and heating networks across a region currently struck by arctic weather.
The storage facility provided enough gas to power upward of 6 million homes if it was all used to generate electricity. The gas network also supplies heating furnaces as cities like Seattle freeze in the coldest temperatures in the city in 14 years.
The city of Ellensburg in mountainous central Washington issued a statement Saturday urging residents to conserve natural gas.
Gusty winds had already caused scattered power outages across Oregon as the winter storm sprayed the region with snow.
The utility that owns the gas storage facility, Puget Sound Energy, said the facility went offline at 2 p.m. and “has steadily been coming back on since then.”
“Puget Sound Energy is asking customers to conserve natural gas and electricity use through the evening hours,” a spokesperson for the company told HuffPost by email. “Due to the extreme cold temperatures facing our area, regional utilities are experiencing higher energy use than forecasted, and we need to reduce strain on the grid.”
The company didn’t say what caused the shutdown. But the watchdog Union of Concerned Scientists released a report last month showing an uptick in gas infrastructure breaking down during cold weather when the fuel is most needed.
The latest episode comes just two years after a winter storm left hundreds of Texans dead as gas pipelines froze and power plants failed, underscoring how the United States’ aging energy distribution networks are heaving under increased demand and extreme weather from climate change.
Federal regulators approved an expansion of the Pacific Northwest’s gas network in October. But the investments needed to prop up the fossil fuel system are facing increased scrutiny from those who say the money should be spent on new, zero-carbon energy infrastructure like solar panels and batteries.
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