Risk of Infrastructure Failure in the Natural Gas Industry-Benefits of Framing and Performing an Assessment. A. Alex, Energy Information Administration EI-42
Tracking energy supplies is a fundamental responsibility of the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy. EIA collects natural gas production and stock data, records detailed pipeline capacity information in geographic information systems, and monitors transmission and local distribution companies as the industry moves toward greater competition. During preparation for Y2K, however, the need for a better understanding of the reliability of natural gas logistics became apparent. For Y2K, it was important to be able to distinguish between a routine outage and a planned or unplanned Y2K-related outage. A greater emphasis on knowing reliability of the infrastructure has also resulted from an overall trend toward lower stocks. In assessing reliability, the start date, end date, location, and type of disruption along with the capacity impacted, and whether it was planned or unplanned was compiled on a company basis. The source for data on outages was a patchwork of items from the trade press, company websites, and contacts from our data collection effort, thus requiring constant revising and updating. The data were compiled to develop insights on outages to improve EIA’s ability to monitor supply logistics and aid in data quality efforts. Using these data, the reliability of natural gas supplies is assessed in view of the distributions associated with the frequency of infrastructure outages, the duration, and the magnitude.
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