TRENTON – The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (Board), in keeping with its mission to ensure safe and reliable utility service, received a preliminary report from Board staff on a natural gas supply tabletop exercise entitled NJ Pilot Light 2017 (NJPL). NJPL was developed to exercise and evaluate the resiliency of the natural gas sector, identify potential impacts to customers and in-state electric generation and general system security during a natural gas outage in the dead of winter.
June 13, 2017, Board staff held the discussion-based tabletop exercise on a hypothetical natural gas supply outage for the purpose of exercising certain protocols among the natural gas sector and State and federal partners. NJPL exercised the natural gas sector’s ability to demonstrate contingency plans, execution of proper responses, coordination of recovery efforts, dissemination of timely and accurate information, and to explore information and intelligence sharing between appropriate stakeholders.
“As a Board, our goal with this tabletop exercise, as with all exercises is to advance the ability of the State, the regulated utilities and our other partners to manage future incidents that threaten the safe and reliable delivery of the critical utilities of water, electric and natural gas,” said Richard S. Mroz, N.J. Board of Public Utilities President. “While this exercise supports that the Board’s approval of resiliency, redundancy and accelerate pipeline replacement programs have strengthened the local natural gas distribution systems delivering gas to residents, businesses and in-state electric generation, it also demonstrates that service reliability risks exist outside of New Jersey with interstate pipelines that bring gas into the state and in New Jersey where distribution systems have only single source connections to interstate pipelines, rather than redundant connections to alternative suppliers.”
Partners in the NJPL consisted of government agencies, regulated gas utilities and private companies, including New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHSP), Public Service Electric and Gas Company, New Jersey Natural Gas, Elizabethtown Gas, South Jersey Gas, and Enbridge, an interstate natural gas supplier formally known as “Spectra.”
The exercise was modeled after a recent natural gas supply disruption and designed to allow natural gas utilities the opportunity to examine interactions with government, public and private natural gas and electric energy sectors during a natural gas supply shortage or outage. The focus was on coordination and collaboration channels and information-sharing expectations. The exercise’s scenario was a regional natural gas disruption incident that affects New Jersey-based assets and its critical natural gas dependent infrastructure.
Staff’s preliminary report to the Board included analysis of results, identification of strengths, potential areas for improvement, and further development of corrective actions and lessons learned.
Identified strengths include:
- New Jersey recognizes that disasters and recovery occur at the local level. State and Federal systems are designed to support local leadership and actions, assist in recovery efforts and provide input into state disaster response and recovery.
- Local Distribution Companies (LDC) and their partners have embraced social media tools to convey timely and accurate information to stakeholders and partners.
- State utility sector maintains and has demonstrated fundamental success of the Mutual Aid concept
- The New Jersey Petroleum Fuel Task Force Plan is a supplemental tool that prioritizes and redirects emergency fuel supply to support emergency services and critical fuel dependent assets during a major disaster.
- LDC operational coordination is a natural gas sector practice exercised daily.
- Incident Command System (ICS) is implemented, understood and utilized.
- All participants displayed ability in coordination and dissemination of critical public information.
- New Jersey maintains an aggressive underground prevention program (Call Before You Dig).
- The Board’s actions to improve natural gas system redundancy and resiliency, through the approval of $2.4 billion in natural gas infrastructure programs, will expedite utility recovery.
Areas with opportunities for improvement that will be the focus of subsequent exercises include:
- Identification of diverse natural gas supplies and interconnection to multiple interstate sources offers improvements in resiliency for the natural gas sector. Furthermore, interconnections between multiple LDCs can mitigate the potential loss of supply from a disruption of service to an interstate supply source.
- Credentialing of utility workers during a disaster needs to be improved ensuring safety, confidence and security.
- Satellite phones need to be exercised and user information needs to be continually updated.
- Southern Reliability Link (SRL) is an example of how there is a strategic need for alternative supply of natural gas in order to increase resiliency to meet demand under adverse conditions.
- Critical customer identification and service curtailment methodology and prioritization needs to be further examined to form a common operating framework.
- Interconnections that have improved resilience in the electric and water sectors may need to be considered as valid applications in the natural gas sector
