Katrina-caused natural gas shortage fuels conservation call (Florida)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida's electric utilities Wednesday urged people to conserve electricity because the state's power supply is heavily reliant on natural gas that normally comes from the Gulf of Mexico by pipeline.

Around the rest of the nation, power supply interruptions aren't likely a problem because most other states rely much less on gulf-produced gas, but the crunch is being felt nonetheless as natural gas prices shoot up because of the squeeze in supply.

The Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry run group charged with ensuring electric reliability in the state, issued an alert Wednesday urging the public to conserve electricity because of the disruption to gulf gas production.

Natural gas - nearly all of it from the gulf - is used to generate about a third of the electricity produced in Florida. Most electric company officials wouldn't say Wednesday that there could be outages, but acknowledged the system is severely strained.

"We need to conserve until we have a better handle on when the supply is going to come back so we don't get into those rolling blackouts," said Linda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the FRCC.

Natural gas has become the fuel of choice for many new power plants around the country because it burns cleaner than coal and gas plants are cheaper to build.

But the potential shortage is particularly problematic in Florida because most of the gas here comes by pipeline from gulf producers, while power plants in other states have a more diverse supply.

"Those pipelines kind of run the gulf coast and you may not have as much access to supplies as other states to offset the loss," said Mark Stultz, a spokesman for the Natural Gas Supply Association in Washington.

California gets much of its power from natural gas plants, but most doesn't come from the Gulf of Mexico.

But, "if there are problems in the gulf coast, that means more pressure on other gas supplying regions in the U.S. to meet the demand," said Claudia Chandler, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission. "We've already seen natural gas prices jump in response."

So far though, California isn't concerned about supply disruptions and consumers aren't being asked to conserve.

Federal officials said Wednesday that more than 83 percent of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was offline, down from 88 percent on Tuesday.

Florida Power & Light, the state's largest electric utility, is getting only about half the amount of natural gas the company normally uses, and about 40 percent of the company's power is generated by gas, said FPL spokesman Bill Swank.

"Every bit that the customer can help us cut down by not using electricity at this point means we can stretch out our supplies," Swank said.

In Florida, the problem is made worse because a key backup fuel, distillate oil, is also in short supply because of Katrina.

"FPL has a pretty good stockpile of the heavy oil that we burn, because we stocked up the tanks before the hurricane came in, but the distillate oil is going to be a problem for a lot of utilities," Swank said.

"Please implement immediate steps to conserve energy in your homes and in your offices," Florida Corrections Secretary James Crosby said in an e-mail to employees that he said was prompted by a request from Gov. Jeb Bush. "As one of Florida's largest employers we are implementing energy conservation measures at all state offices."

A gas shortage, however, would not affect Gulf Power Co., which serves the western half of the Florida Panhandle, because it relies 70 percent on coal and can tap into other coal- and hydro-based Southern Co.-owned utilities if necessary, said spokesman John Hutchinson.

Gulf also now has excess generating capacity because thousands of customers in Southern Co.'s system, which includes storm-stricken Alabama and Mississippi, have lost power, Hutchinson said.

The Pensacola-based company, meanwhile, had restored service to more than 91 percent of the 130,000 homes and businesses that had lost it during the hurricane. Gulf expected to have the remaining 11,255 restored by the end of the day, and then planned to send 200 employees Thursday to Mississippi.

Well maybe they should get it throught their thick skulls that if Florida wants to have energy reliability, it needs to have offshore drilling and some refineries.

You would think that in light of events that they could easily put out a statement that they have reconsidered their stance against development, but my guess is that they won't. I believe that Florida even has at least one refinery owned by AIRI that could be turned back on in St. Marks:

St. Marks, accessible by barge from the adjacent St. Marks River and Gulf of Mexico, has a 465,000 barrel storage capacity, and a 20,000 barrel per day capacity refinery which the Company is not currently operating. The Lake Charles refinery supplies the company's St. Marks refinery with bulk product via AIM. St. Marks allows the Company to significantly increase its retail customer base by penetrating into the large Florida, Georgia and Alabama markets.

A nuclear plant or two wouldn't hurt either.

Yes, more nuclear power in Florida would be great. Florida is currently ranked 11th in the U.S. in nuclear capacity, but for such a populous state, it would make more sense to be higher in the DOE list:

FLORIDA

Florida Nuclear Highlights

Of the 31 States with nuclear capacity, Florida ranks 11^th.
Crystal River ranks 7th on the Energy Information Administration's list of 100 largest power plants and Turkey Point ranks 50th, but both powerplants have fossil as well as nuclear units. St. Lucie, strictly a nuclear plant, ranks 99th.
Florida’s nuclear power plants generated 33,704,230 megawatt hours of electricity in 2002, a new State record.

Nuclear Generation in Florida, 1960 through 2003
Million Kilowatt Hours

   Sources: Energy Information Administration, State Energy Data Report 1999, and Electric Power Annual, Volume 1, 2001, and EIA Survey Form 906.

Florida's Nuclear Power Plants

Plant Name Nuclear Units Capacity Net MWe Share of State Nuclear Generation Total Operator/Owner

Crystal River

Unit 3

842

22%

Florida Power Corporation/Progress Energy

St. Lucie

Unit 1, Unit 2

1,678

43%

Florida Power & Light (FPL)/FPL and various others*

Turkey Point

Unit 3, Unit 4

1,386

36%

FPL/same

Total

5 reactors

3,906

100%

    * Unit 1 is wholly owned by FPL, Unit 2 is owned by FPL (85.1 %), Florida Municipal Power Agency (8.8 %), and Orlando Utilities (6.1%).
   Note: Total exceeds 100 percent due to rounding.
   Source: Form EIA-860, "Annual Electric Generator Report"

Competing Fuels

Electricity Market in Florida
(Percent Generated by Fuel)

Year Coal Gas Hydro Nuclear Petroleum Other

2003

31

32

*

15

18

4

2002 30 32 * 17 17 4

   *less than one percent
   Source: Form EIA-906, Power Plant Report

Emissions

Florida Electric Power Industry Estimated Emissions
Thousand Short Tons

Product Thousand
Short Tons National Ranking Annual Growth Rate
(1993 through 2002)

Sulfur Dioxide

502

7^th

-4.2 percent

Nitrogen Oxide

289

4^th

-1.4 percent

Carbon Dioxide

131,484

3rd

2.5 percent

   Source: State Electricity Profiles, Energy Information Administration

See also, the comprehensive table comparing emissions tonnage for all 50 States plus the District of Columbia.

License Renewal

On June 6, 2002 the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a renewed license to the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant, for both units 3 and 4. On October 2, 2003, the NRC approved the license renewal application for units 1 and 2 at the St. Lucie nuclear power plant.

Information on the current status of all license renewal applications appears on the NRC web site at http://www.nrc.gov . To locate the data, select “index,” then select the letter “l” and click on “License Renewal.”

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