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Natural Gas Crunch Could Shut Down Boston

By Eric McErlain
From today's Boston Globe:
In March , ISO-New England CEO Gordon van Welie made headlines by putting coal and nuclear options on the table. Given New England's environmental attitudes, it is hard to believe that investors could be persuaded to risk their money developing either of these options.

[...]

The one thing states can't do is nothing. At a conference this year, van Welie told state utility regulators that if the Everett LNG facility lost its gas supply for a week during a January cold snap, the electric and gas grids in the City of Boston would fail.
I wonder how many more warnings the folks in New England need before disaster strikes?

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Comments

Anonymous said…
The article also puts focus on the dangers of deregulation, something I agree with.

Deregulation leads to a lack of long term planning, to higher power prices (=higher corporate profits) and in the long run higher power generation costs (as risks, and hence discount rates, become higher). Deregulation also gives a structural boost to low capital cost generation, such as natural gas plants.

Those things are still being planned and built in spite of North American gas extraction having peaked and gone into decline.

Fiddling while Rome burns, indeed.

On the other hand, as I have recently become an Exelon shareholder I am all for deregulation. Just not in my backyard.

Hehehe.
December 8, 2006 at 4:00 PM
Fat Man said…
New Englanders turn up their noses at wind, and they are too far north for solar or bio-mass. So where do they think their energy is going to come from? The Tooth-fairy?

Back in the seventies, Texans had bumper stickers that said things like:

Let them freeze in the dark

and

Out of gas? Out of work?
Burn a Yankee
December 9, 2006 at 12:03 AM
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