The weekend is expected to give some relief to California’s “cold snap,” although by normal Midwest or Eastern standards, the daytime temperatures in the 50s and 60s are downright balmy, but by the standards of this state — even in winter — it’s been downright freezing in the nighttime and morning hours, pushing natural gas consumption to near-record levels from San Diego to the Oregon border.

Some were wondering if Old Man Winter didn’t get the East and West Coasts mixed up, since the Mid-Atlantic has been seeing temperatures in the 70s over the past week. It’s a pretty poor winter when California leads the cold weather news.

With the week-long low temperatures, some of the California utility spokespeople were speculating why new records have not been set, and the consensus Friday was that a combination of more efficient equipment in place among end-users, the state’s recent year-long conservation push and the recessionary economy that has cut business operations, all have contributed to keeping the peak send-out short of previous records.

Even though it wasn’t a record a PG&E spokesperson agreed “there was huge weather demand for us this week.” On a typical January day the average temperature in PG&E’s service territory would be 49 degrees, which would equate to a sendout of about 3.4 Bcf/d, she said.

There was no price spike, however, because both PG&E and SoCalGas were serving demand with huge storage withdrawals, a trader said, and with SoCalGas system storage still 65% full (compared to the typical 40% at this time of year), there is no threat of the state running out of gas.

In the northern half of the state, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. sent out nearly 4 Bcf on last Tuesday, but that is below its all-time one-day record of 4.3 Bcf on Dec. 23, 1998. The PG&E gas utility sent another 3.7 Bcf to its customers Wednesday, and similar daily levels the rest of this week.

Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co., Los Angeles, the nation’s largest natural gas distributor, sent out 4.7 Bcf on Thursday, well short of its all-time record of 5.3 Bcf set in December 1990, although its sister utility in the Sempra family, San Diego Gas and Electric Co. reported an hourly record Thursday, pumping out 41 MMcf of gas during one hourly span.

Overall, SDG&E’s sendout Wednesday was 653 MMcf, close to its all-time record of 660 MMcf set Jan. 15, 2001.

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