WPRO News and The Associated Press
Rhode Island public utilities regulators say a natural gas outage that affected more than 7,000 customers last winter was caused by low pressure in a pipeline.
The 74-page Division of Public Utilities and Carriers report released Wednesday blamed the low pressure on high demand for gas driven by low temperatures; failure of a power system at a liquefied natural gas storage and vaporization facility; and a malfunctioning valve at a meter station.
The agency says it will oppose efforts by National Grid to recover $25 million in costs related to the outage from ratepayers.
Thousands of residents of Newport and Middletown went without gas or heat for days last January.
“I think that it’s clear from the report that the natural gas outage in January was absolutely preventable,” Newport Mayor Jamie Bova told WPRO News.
“It could have been prevented. National Grid did not properly manage or maintain their distribution systems. The report shows that they didn’t understand the impact of increased demand on that system that was happening on Aquidneck Island or in Newport.
“I was also pretty disappointed in reading the report. It’s recommended that National Grid be responsible for the $25 million dollars in recovery costs that they incurred and not have that levied on the Rhode Island customers. But I’m disappointed that that’s our only recourse, and that we don’t have a better way of … really punishing them and providing even more incentive… to prevent this from happening again,” Bova said.
National Grid in a statement said it didn’t agree with everything in the report but has been working hard to learn from the outage.
