New York Natural Gas Shortage Thwarts Emergency Preparedness
I recently read a scathing opinion piece in Forbes regarding an impending natural gas shortage in New York state caused by what amounts to a de facto ban on new pipeline development. As always, my mind went right to how this might impact the emergency preparedness of the state’s utilities, and where my mind went was not pretty.
Drivers of New York’s Natural Gas Shortage
According to the Forbes article, New York Governor Cuomo is purposefully obstructing new pipeline development. This prevents gas from supply-rich Pennsylvania from making its way over the NY state border and necessitates importing liquified natural gas from overseas locations. Not helping matters is the state’s ban on fracking. The resulting natural gas shortage is forcing the state’s larger natural gas utilities to pause accepting any new customers.
Impact to New York’s Emergency Preparedness
All in all, the impact on preparedness cannot be good. There are a number of issues that come to mind:
- Many homes and businesses have been forced to stay with or switch to oil, which doesn’t help climate change because oil produces nearly 40% more carbon dioxide than natural gas. Obviously as climate change raises temperatures, the frequency and severity of storms is likely to increase, creating more outages.
- The de facto pipeline ban, coupled with an increasing demand for natural gas, alters the supply and demand equation to the point where reliability can only decline, leading to outages.
- The shortage could eventually impact regional natural gas-fueled power plants, further decreasing reliability.
There are likely other impediments, but you get the point. New York’s pipeline stance does not seem to serve any useful purpose other than to garner political favors while the state’s utility companies, businesses and residents lose.
