Despite facing three major weather events in just six months, the nation’s natural gas industry continues to pass the resilience test “with flying colors,” according to a study released Monday by the Natural Gas Council (NGC).

“This study serves to underscore the fact that U.S. natural gas and the pipelines that transport it are remarkably safe, reliable and resilient,” said CEO Don Santa of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, one of five full NGC members, along with the American Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Natural Gas Supply Association. “The weather-related challenges the industry faced last year were extraordinary, and as the report shows, the natural gas system fully met those challenges.”

The report examines the industry’s preparation and actions during three weather events that occurred between August 2017 and January 2018, and their impacts on customers. The events analyzed were Hurricane Harvey, which hit South Texas last August with catastrophic rainfall that shuttered the energy breadbasket of the United States; Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in Florida in September, knocking out power to millions; and January’s “bomb cyclone,” which produced constraints that sent natural gas prices skyrocketing and destroyed as much as 4 Bcf/d of demand as more coal and fuel oil entered the market.

“Ultimately, the greatest test of resilience is whether commitments can be met regardless of the degree of stress that is caused by a weather event,” according to RBN Energy LLC, which conducted the analysis. “As this study demonstrates, the natural gas industry passes this test with flying colors.”

RBN attributed the industry’s operational reliability and resilience to four characteristics: extensive underground locations of facilities, line pack, network reliability, and physical configuration, which limits the impact of disruptions. In addition, the shift from largely Gulf of Mexico supplies to regionally diverse onshore shale production has “hurricane-proofed” the industry over the last decade, the analysts said.

“Reliability and resilience were demonstrated through the continued service and availability of natural gas despite threatening weather and outages on the electric grid” during each of the weather events, they said. “In the rare instances of natural gas service interruption, the industry demonstrated rapid recovery, thereby minimizing impacts to a negligible amount.”

During the bomb cyclone, PJM Interconnection saw a significant increase in coal use, rather than a turn-up of gas facilities, but that “was strictly an economic decision, not a lack of availability of gas,” according to the report.

Firm transportation customers were getting their gas from the Marcellus Shale and other southern points, “and the entities selling the gas to them didn’t have the ability to go up and capture the $100 prices up north because there wasn’t any capacity to do it,” said RBN’s Richard Smead, managing director of advisory services. “…It would be nice to go capture $100 for your gas, but you would in essence have to pay about $100 to get it there is what it boils down to.”

The analysis was a follow-up to an NGC study released last year* which concluded that industry practices contribute to the reliability and resiliency of natural gas, but indicated that if large-volume customers want undisrupted service and continuity, they should enter into firm transportation contracts.

*Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed the 2017 study. NGI regrets the error.