New Curtailment Rule Prioritizes Natural Gas Supplies During Emergencies Changes Approved by Commissioners Go into Effect on Sept. 1 After nearly 50 years, the Railroad Commission will have a new curtailment rule that updates the state’s priorities for firm gas supplies and transportation during emergencies. On April 12, commissioners adopted amendments to 16 Texas Administrative Code §7.455 to replace Order 489, which had been in place since 1973. This latest action by the Commission continues efforts to ensure Texans that in energy emergency events, like Winter Storm Uri, their life-saving natural gas for food and heat will continue to flow. The new curtailment rule is similar to an emergency order commissioners issued during Uri to prioritize natural gas deliveries for human needs, which in turn helped 99.95% of gas utility local distribution residential customers to maintain natural gas service during the storm. Similar to last year’s emergency order, the new rule also cements gas deliveries to electric generation facilities as a top priority.
ENERGY NEWS
The curtailment rule is triggered when a gas utility is unable to deliver all the gas it is contractually obligated to deliver (through what’s known as firm contracts) during emergency events and has to curtail its firm customers. In such situations, the rule sets the following order of priorities for firm deliveries: 1. Human needs customers and local distribution systems which serve human needs customers. 2. Electric generation facilities. 3. Industrial and commercial users of the minimum natural gas required to prevent physical harm and/or ensure critical safety to the plant facilities, to plant personnel, or the public when such protection cannot be achieved through the use of an alternate fuel. 4. Small industrials and regular commercial loads that use less than 3 million cubic feet of gas per day. 5. Large industrial and commercial users for fuel or as a raw material where an alternate fuel or raw material cannot be used and operation and plant production would be curtailed or shut down completely when natural gas is curtailed.
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