Did consumers save enough natural gas during the recent cold snap?

The winter's first advisory calling on Los Angeles area consumers to lower their thermostats to conserve scarce natural gas supplies has come and gone, but Southern California Gas Company doesn't know yet if it was effective in getting residents and companies to back off their gas use.
    
That's because the statistics for gas usage during the advisory will not be known for some time, said company spokeswoman Melissa Bailey. The alert was issued late Sunday afternoon, and it was lifted Tuesday after a couple of nights with overnight low temperatures in the 40s and daytime highs in the 60s and low 70s.

The cold snap forced the gas company to draw on gas supplies it has stored in underground reservoirs around the region.

"I can tell you there were significant withdrawals," Bailey said.
    
While the company does not state how close to an actual shortage of gas the company's supply came,  online statistics posted by the company make it appear that supplies did not drop to a critical point.

SoCal Gas' online report shows its inventory of natural gas held at its four regional storage fields dropped by 2.1 billion cubic feet between Dec. 17 and Dec. 21. Daily gas usage during that period was between 3.07 and 3.67 billion cubic feet per day.

That is less than SoCal Gas' maximum daily gas delivery capacity of about 4.7 billion cubic feet.

SoCal Gas customers used 2.29 billion cubic feet more gas than the system took in between Dec. 17 and 20, according to a usage dashboard compiled by the U.S. Energy Administration using SoCal Gas data.

The company has about 56.9 billion cubic feet of gas stored at its Aliso Canyon, Santa Clarita Honor Rancho, Playa del Rey and La Goleta storage fields. Withdrawals were from all but the Aliso Canyon storage field. Systemwide, that gas bank is far less than the 112 billion cubic feet the company had socked away underground in 2014, a year before the gas well blowout at Aliso Canyon.

The Aliso Canyon field, which would normally be filled close to its 86 billion cubic feet capacity during summer to provide an ample supply of gas in the winter, was bled down to 15 bcf during last year's massive gas leak. It's been held at that level without injections of further gas by order of the Public Utilities Commission.
    
SoCal Gas has been operating for more than one year without its biggest storage field online. That reduces the company's ability to get large amounts of gas to customers at times of highest demand, and increases the risk of gas shortages during winter.

The gas advisory notice to the public is one of 31 measures the state ordered SoCal Gas and others to take to stretch gas supplies through this winter to ensure the reliability of both gas and electricity services. The advisories were announced on the media, and individuals can sign up to receive them directly from SoCal Gas.