Gas distributors across the northwestern U.S. — from Washington state to Colorado — were back in a normal operations mode Friday, at the same time adding up record natural gas send-outs prompted by a freezing arctic storm that drove through the region at the beginning of the week.

Xcel Energy’s Colorado customers used a record 1.94 Bcf of natural gas during a 24-hour period, a company spokesperson said, exceeding the previous record of 1.9 Bcf. Besides the cold, a contributing factor to the record is the fact that the utility has added 150,000 customers since 1998 when the previous record was set.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) in western Washington set a natural gas send-out record at the outset of the coldsnap and then a near-record for electricity the next day. As of Friday, almost all of the 125,000 customers who lost power had been restored, a company spokesperson said, noting the remaining 2,500 would have power by the end of the day Friday.

Portland-based Northwest Natural Gas reported “unprecedented” levels of demand, but few outages. “In part, the company was able to meet the record demand because of the recent completion of a 12-mile portion of the South Mist Pipeline Extension, which reinforced supply to the west and south of the Portland metropolitan area,” said a Northwest Gas utility spokesperson.

Last Monday, Northwest set its all-time record of 8.8 million therms, and its second highest level ever the next day (8.2 million therms), the spokesperson said. The previous record was 7.4 million therms Dec. 20, 1998.

On the electric side a Portland General Electric (PGE) spokesperson in Oregon said the utility had “turned the corner” Friday morning, going from “two-steps-forward/two-steps-back” earlier in the week to “two-steps-forward/one-step-back” at present. With 15,000 customers still without power, the spokesperson said it would take weekend to complete restores

To the east in Montana, NorthWestern Energy faced electricity demand (1,547 MW) Tuesday, exceeding totals reached the past two summers in 100-degree heat. Temperatures in some places bottomed out at minus-31 degrees, a utility spokesperson told local news media. The combination utility also reported sending out about 275 MMcf/d in the midst of the current cold snap.

Earlier in the week PGE and PSE were still coping with outages and near-record demands. Thursday morning PGE still had 40,000 customers offline. In western state of Washington, PSE coped with the aftermath of Sunday and Monday’s record snowfall and low temperatures, and like its counterpart in Portland, Puget it used all of its available work force all week long (24/7) to deal with the situation.

Snow followed by the freezing rain Wednesday caused lines to come down, knocking out power to 125,000 Puget electric customers, and 25,000 remained without power Thursday morning. A utility spokesperson in Bellevue, WA, north of Seattle said the utility expected to have most of those customers restored by the end of the day.

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