Seeking some credit for helping resolve California’s wholesale energy price and supply crisis last year, Southern California Gas Co. said at year-end that it “did everything in its power” to increase access and availability of natural gas supplies in the state, marking its tenth consecutive year of avoiding curtailments to its 5.1 million customers. (Its affiliated utility in the Sempra Energy companies, San Diego Gas and Electric Co., however, did curtail some of its largest industrial customers, including two power plants, on two separate occasions last winter.)

“SoCalGas clearly demonstrated during the gas price crisis that it was part of the solution and not the problem,” said Lee Stewart, president of the gas utility’s transportation services group, in a report to employees released last month.

Sempra Energy completed an internal study and analysis of the natural gas price spikes that hit the state early last year, driving wholesale prices to record levels. It concluded the gas-only utility did everything it could to drive down prices, considering that a “unique combination of factors” that were unforeseen converged to drive them up. Many of these factors were beyond the gas utility’s control, including:

These factors caused the demand for natural gas on the SoCalGas system to increase dramatically, driving up prices that electric generators were willing to pay for fuel and causing large industrial customers to store less gas in the summer of 2000, adding more demand for flowing supplies early in 2001.

SoCalGas said under these conditions it rearranged its maintenance schedules to maximize its system capabilities, fully used its interstate and intrastate transportation capacity, met storage goals for its small core customers, stepped up its efforts to get large customers to store more supplies and took steps that are now being completed to add 11% capacity to its in-state transmission pipeline system and modify three underground storage facilities to gain an extra 24 Bcf of gas this winter.

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