Atmos Energy explains to state gas regulator what went wrong during pre-Christmas Arctic explosion and how many customers were affected

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Atmos Energy told Texas officials that demand exceeded “contingency planning” when more than 2,300 customers faced their gas supply interrupted during the pre-Christmas Arctic explosion.

Days after the winter event, Gov. Greg Abbott and local and state officials demanded that Atmos explain why hundreds of residents in North Texas found themselves with little or no gas pressure, leaving them unable to heat their homes. Threatening cold has gripped the state.

“The issue was not system-wide,” Atmos said in response to a letter from State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, who represents parts of Arlington and Grande Prairie. “This was driven by demand during the winter event that exceeded our local contingency planning.”

“Moving forward, we recognize the need to have even stronger contingency planning and expand our redundant capacity…,” the letter says.

Turner said in an interview with the WFAA on Tuesday that he was not yet satisfied with the company’s response.

“I think there’s some good information in there, but I think there’s still a lot of incomplete answers,” Turner said. “We still don’t understand exactly why the system went down on December 22 and 23 for so many households in Grande Prairie and Arlington. I do not have a clear understanding of how exactly this can be prevented, again, in the future. if there is another full weather event which it could very well be since we are only in January.

Turner said he, Grande Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen, and state senators Royce West and Nathan Johnson met with Atmos officials a week ago on the first day of the legislative session.

He said he also plans to meet with Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) officials soon to discuss Atmos’ responses and consider next steps. The RRC regulates gas companies.

Atmos has detailed the number of customers affected by the hurricane for the first time.

Atmos told RRC that 2,306 customers reported “service outages”. Among them, 226 in Arlington, 179 in Grande Prairie, 231 in Fort Worth and 24 in Benbrook, representing less than one percent of customers in these cities.

“Based on available information, service outages lasted an average of 14 hours in Arlington, 12 hours in Grande Prairie, 13 hours in Fort Worth and 11 hours in Benbrook,” Atmos told RRC.

Atmos told RRC that the service outages were “caused by circumstances other than those that occurred” during a winter storm in February 2021.

The company said it had difficulty obtaining natural gas supplies during the 2021 winter storm. However, in a recent winter event, the company said that “service outages were mainly due to capacity bottlenecks where demand exceeded our contingency plans in localized areas.”

Grande Prairie officials were outraged by the recent power outages and sent a letter on Dec. 28 asking the RRC to hold Atmos accountable for “insufficient responses” during a recent winter storm.

“Over the past four winter weather events, our history with Atmos has highlighted a detrimental trend of infrastructure failures in isolated areas, communication delays and a lack of public education initiative,” Mayor Ron Jensen and City Manager Steve Dye wrote.

Jensen told WFAA last month that the Grand Peninsula and Westchester areas in his city were hit by major outages, even though he had been promised that would not happen.

The city’s two fire departments also completely lost their gas pressure about eight hours into the winter events.

In the letter, the City of Grande Prairie also accused Atmos representatives of failing to contact before the gas pressure dropped “significantly” and of failing to notify “affected residents” on how to report outages. which forced the city to send its own emergency message on behalf of Atmos.

“This latest winter storm was predicted well in advance and the Atmos service went down in just eight hours in extremely cold weather, and they also failed to notify our city in advance of the pressure drop,” the letter says.

In its response to Representative Turner, Atmos said it will take additional steps to provide more compressed natural gas to the Grande Prairie, Arlington, Fort Worth and Benbrook areas during future winter storms.

“We are committed to working with our government regulators and government agency partners to prepare for and respond to future weather events,” Turner said in the letter.

Atmos told RRC officials that it should have met with Grande Prairie officials to discuss its plans and preparations for the winter season. The company said it has completed two of the three projects to support growing demand for natural gas in the Grand Peninsula region.

The company said it had completed 10 projects in Arlington, Grande Prairie and Mansfield. Two projects are almost completed. The cost of the projects is about 11 million dollars.