Insight
Extreme natural gas prices in California: will Socal experience gas shortage this winter?
*Please note that this report only includes an Excel data file if this is indicated in "What's included" below
Report summary
South California natural gas prices set a record this summer when the Socal Citygate price reached $40/mmbtu in early August—the highest summer gas price in North America, also in the world. The culprit of this extreme price volatility is various intrastate pipeline maintenance and outages that have impacted deliverability from Socal border to the citygate, as the Socal Border prices were not nearly as extreme this summer. Some of the pipeline maintenance and outage issues will not be resolved by this winter so the question becomes will there be enough gas this winter for Socal or are we looking at the possibility of rolling black-outs due to gas shortage? We have developed nine scenarios with various pipeline outage assumptions and weather patterns to investigate the risk of a gas shortage in Socal for the winter.
Table of contents
- Executive Summary
- Background: extreme gas prices for an average summer
- Winter 2018/2019: modeling with uncertain outage and weather conditions
- What are the risks for this winter?
Tables and charts
This report includes the following images and tables:
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Chart 1: Socal system demandChart 2: Socal historical pricesMap: Socal intrastate system
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Table 1: Socal receipt capacity scenariosChart 3: Socal historical winter gas deliveryChart 4: Socal system delivery scenariosTable 2: End-of-season storage scenarios
What's included
This report contains:
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