Charleston gas outage reaches one week as majority of affected residents remain without service - WCHS
Charleston gas outage reaches one week as majority of affected residents remain without service | WCHS
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — New numbers show more than half the customers who lost natural gas service a week ago in Charleston’s West Side are still out in the cold.
Mountaineer Gas continued to dig into its sprawling problem Friday in a pipe network extending more than 40 miles. Nearly three dozen repair crews have worked to restore services after water inside its network spread from a broken West Virginia American Water main, impacting furnaces, hot water heaters and stoves for hundreds of area residents.
Friday marked a week of a major interruption of natural gas service where there were no quick fixes for those impacted by the flooded natural gas pipeline. Charleston resident Claudia Benton said she hasn’t heard from the gas company for a week.
“It's getting old real quick,” Benton admitted. “It's a little nippy in there. It gets down to the low 50s in the house at night."
Mountaineer Gas senior vice president of administration Moses Skaff spoke with Eyewitness News Friday about the ongoing restoration efforts.
"We hope to get the majority of the customers on as quickly and safely as we can within the next few days,” Skaff said. “It’s going to be an ongoing, day-to-day operation. Certainly we hope to get the majority of the customers on as quickly and safely as we can, within the next few days. Right now we have gas available to a lot of the home, but it’s the inside that’s creating the slowdown on getting them up and running.”
Late Friday afternoon, the gas company reported a total of 434 restorations with another 83 customers ready for inspection and reconnection.
That's cold comfort for people still out of service.
The outage has spurred two lawsuits and an investigation by state officials.
Both Mountaineer Gas and West Virginia American Water are targeted in an investigation launched Thursday by the state Public Service Commission into the water leak and gas outage.
Commission Chair Charlotte Lane declined comment on the ongoing probe.
Related Knowledge Center: Liquefied natural gas
Driven by plentiful natural gas produced from shale plays, the United States began exporting liquefied natural gas in 2016 when the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana opened and shipped its first cargo. Since then, additional capacity, or trains, have been added to Sabine Pass, and terminals have become operational in Cameron Parish, La.; Hackberry, La.; Cove Point, Md.; and Corpus Christi, Texas. The Energy Information Administration projects that U.S. LNG export capacity will reach 8.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) by the end of 2019, making it the third largest in the world, behind Australia and Qatar. The tariff war with China has the potential to impact some final investment decisions for additional terminals in the coming months.