Finally, after much waiting for a compliancy statement and hearing nothing, I have received this brochure with my most recent heating bill:

"Company on Schedule to meet year 2000 Goal

We have made significant progress towards reaching Year 2000 readiness and our goal is to have critical and high priority systems ready by March 31, 1999. Examples of such systems include: electronic controls along pipelines and computer-aided dispatch. The remaining medium and low priority systems, such as pipeline simulation designs and inspection programs, are scheduled to be ready by June 30, 1999.

Continuity plans to cover possible Year 2000 disruptons are being developed. The following is an update.

--Manual control procedures are being put in place and being tested.

--Additional employees will be at key field locations with staff on standby during critical time frames.

--Arrangement of extra supplies will be put in place to meet possible demands and supplier disruptions.

--Procedures are being established to maintain gas flow in the event of supply problems.

Our company is committed to ensuring the continuation of safe, reliable natural gas service and products to all of our customers into the Year 2000."

Can any of you natural gas experts tell, from reading the statement, whether or not our location will have natural gas to heat our homes next winter?

Thanks.

-- confused (confused@mytown.com), March 11, 1999

Answers

Confused - I'm not one of the "experts" I also hope will respond, but I do have a few comments which I better characterize as assumptions. Your vulnerability may depend somewhat where you are located. I'm at the end of a couple thousand of miles of pipes, for an industry the Senate report says is way behind, so I feel I have no choice but to assume I must do without heat next winter. A limited amount of natural gas comes in by port near me, but NG tankers are about as dangerous as they come, so I can see it being the kind of cargo the Coast Guard might now allow in the harbor for a while. Piped natural gas over the long haul has very few routes available, unlike the electrical grid. And I believe those stretches of pipes belong to different companies. I believe it may not be possible to find ahead of time all the embedded systems that will need to be replaced in the distribution lines, in which case there will be Respond-On-Failure. If so, one of my major concerns is whether the replacement equipment could or would be adequately stockpiled beforehand. Also, I am curious what procedures could be "established to maintain gas flow in the event of supply problems". My heating system needs both gas and electricity - the potential for gas interruptions is the main reason I bought a wood stove.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), March 11, 1999.

To be honest, I can't tell either - neither from this description nor from what my own gas supplier is saying - er, not saying.

I don't expect natural gas pressure to be reliable until power is more (not less) reliable nationally ( becuase of the length of most gas pipelines) and until national telecoms and satellites are reliable again. The individual SCADA (system measurement and flow control programs) processes should tehn be to start coming back up on line - then the rest can begin recovery.

If there is no reliable monitoring or remote control - will they let billions of cubic of flamable high pressure gas continue to flow through thousands of mile of unattended pipelines? I wouldn't. You couldn't bill for gas you can't measure. And even industrial customers and power companies would not seem to want to pay millions of dollars based on "guesses" about how much was used.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 11, 1999.

Another problem to consider is that if the gas lines are shut down for safety purposes, each individual user must have their lines purged before restarting. This apparently must be done by gas company employees or contractors.

After the recent major gas explosion near Plainwell, MI, "gas company employees fanned out to over 1,000 houses affected by the shutdown to test and restart the gas systems". Or words to that effect.

I have read about this requirement elsewhere. If this is true, then getting large areas back "up" and running on gas could be a monumental effort. Months? I don't know. Just reporting what I have read. Can a gas company person here confirm, deny, or clarify this, please?

-- Jon Williamson (pssomerville@sprintmail.com), March 11, 1999.

HERE is a lengthy report on the status of the natural gas industry from Bruce Beach, the National Coordinator of the Y2K Network (http://www.webpal.org/list.htm). He is a former professor of economics and computer science, an author and editor of books related to computer science, and a holder of microprocessor patents in both the U.S. and Canada. His conclusion about the vulnerability of the natural gas system to Y2K disruptions is sobering.

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), March 12, 1999.