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AMERICAN GAS OCTOBER 201218

Mutual aid programs allow utilities in tight situations to “borrow” crews and equipment

Mayday, Mayday!

K en Oostman signed the paperwork for the mutual aid program of the Southern Gas Association just two weeks before a “perfect storm” of weather and supply

challenges hit his area.Oostman, vice president of operations for

New Mexico Gas Co., thought twice before join-ing the mutual aid program, believing it was unlikely his utility would ever need to reach out to other utilities for help. After all, New Mexico is known for its mild weather and gas outages are rare.

That all changed on Feb. 3, 2011. “We’d been tracking a storm that originated in Canada for a week to 10 days and had taken all the steps we normally take for bad winter weather,” says Oostman. “We’d been buying extra gas and had our emergency plans in place. We thought we were in good shape to handle the storm.”

But on that day, temperatures throughout the Southwest and into Mexico dropped to record lows, causing a spike in demand. At the same time, NMGC’s suppliers in Texas and New Mexico were facing their own problems due to weather, including frozen wellheads and electrical outages that significantly reduced production and caused serious disruptions in the supply of natural gas to interstate pipelines and local distribution companies throughout the Southwest.

Recognizing that delivery pressures and supply volumes were falling while usage was rising—a situation that risked a system col-lapse—NMGC was forced to declare a system emergency and curtail portions of its system. Nearly 29,000 customers were affected. Other natural gas utilities in neighboring states were forced to do the same, leaving approximately 50,000 customers throughout the Southwest without service.

That morning, Oostman requested help through the SGA’s mutual aid program as well as

the AGA’s Mutual Assistance Program (of which NMGC is also a member) to line up additional workers to help with service restoration. The two associations immediately notified program participants that NMGC needed assistance, and a conference call was set up for utilities that might be able to send crews to the area.

“Being part of these two mutual aid pro-grams gave us a big jump-start in organizing our response,” says Oostman. “The basic guide-lines for working together are already set, so all we had to do was work out the specifics such as the rates for reimbursement and the logistics of when work would start.”

Facilitating AidLaunched in 1995, the AGA’s Mutual Assistance Program is a voluntary, no-fee initiative involv-ing a coalition of AGA member companies in the United States and Canada that agree to a set of baseline provisions that govern mutual assistance during a natural disaster or other emergency. Participants also agree to maintain a database (available through www.aga.org) that contains company-specific emergency contact information and field capabilities. The program includes nearly 100 utilities.

GARY JAMES is a business-to-business writer and editor based in Chapel Hill, N.C.

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The AGA’s program is meant to complement The AGA’s program is meant to complement local, state and regional mutual assistance programs—such as the one offered by the SGA— when the scope of a disaster exceeds the limits of those programs.

With the assistance of the AGA and SGA programs, NMGC quickly identified utilities in a range of states that might have crews and equipment available to help with its emer-gency. It then worked out the terms for engage-ment, depending on which mutual aid program the supporting company belonged to. The AGA’s Master Operations Assistant Agreement was used for AGA program participants.

“This sped up the process immensely,” says Oostman. “Instead of starting from scratch, we had a template that led us through the key issues involved in this type of cooperative venture,” such as compensation, arrangements for accommodation, qualifications needed, and work rules.

Once the agreements were signed, it was “all hands on deck,” says Oostman. “The first crews started arriving on Friday [Feb. 4]. We had a team that made their arrangements and got them squared away on their assignments.”

Because these workers were coming from the

AGA Mutual Aid: Now Even Friendlier In late 2011, AGA streamlined its Mutual Assistance Program to make it more user-friendly. Now, the database of participating companies and the Master Operations Assistance Agreement are located in one central spot on the web site — the Emergency Planning Resource Center — along with a Request for Assistance (RFA) and other resources.

The goal is to make it easier for participating companies as well as the public to find information, says Nneka Assing, AGA’s director of engineering services. “Companies that need help can come to the site and find everything they need to line up support,” says Assing. “They can search the database to find companies in their area, and they also can retrieve RFA and MOAA docu-mentation. The process of initiating a request and gathering information has been made much simpler.”

In addition to its use by Mutual Assistance Program participants, the database is searchable by the industry at large and the publics. “In an emer-gency, anybody can easily find phone numbers and contact information for local utilities,” Assing says.

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utility industry, they “could hit the ground run-ning” with no additional training, Oostman adds. “We only had to brief them on our turn-off/turn-on protocols” and other system specifics.

Over the course of the next few days, nearly 200 employees from 10 other utilities assisted with NMGC’s restoration effort. Crews came from as far away as Michigan, Florida, Missis-sippi, and Louisiana, as well as neighboring

Oklahoma and Texas. Three utilities in New Mexico also helped out.

In addition, more than 200 NMGC employ-ees—including supervisors and engineers—more than 100 local plumbers and contractors, 300-plus National Guard members, and numerous temporary employees were involved in the restoration project.

As a result, NMGC made an initial “first pass” attempt to relight every affected household and business by the after-noon of Tuesday, Feb. 8—five days after the outage commenced. The entire process, including follow-up visits, was completed in just over a week.

The experience provided Oostman with some key lessons that could help other utilities prepare for similar events. First, he says, utilities facing an outage or other emergency need to have a plan in place that outlines key steps to take when a crisis oc-curs. Communications—getting the word out to customers, government officials, and other constituencies—is a key element in any plan. NMGC used traditional media including local radio and TV, along with the company website, to get the word out in its emergency, but in the future it also would use social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

When it comes to signing mu-tual assistance contracts, Oostman recommends that all project partici-pants have a clear understanding of the capabilities and equipment being offered, the tasks that the workforce will be assigned, and the conditions in which the responders will work. He also suggests that the requesting utility set up a team to coordinate responder resources.

Oostman adds that utilities participating in mutual assistance programs should conduct regular conference calls with their counter-parts at other companies to share insights about recent incidents and developments. Finally, he encourages utilities that aren’t part of a mutual assistance program to get involved. “If you think you’ll never need it, think again,” he says.

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OCTOBER 2012 AMERICAN GAS 23

Help After a HurricaneIn 2005, Alagasco, a subsidiary of Energen based in Alabama, provided 70 employees over the course of five weeks to help the municipality of Bay St. Louis, Miss., restore service disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. The effort was organized by the SGA, and utilities from Tennessee, New York, and New Jersey also participated.

“Entergy coordinated the effort for the west-ern side of the storm, and Mobile Gas handled the eastern side in Missis-sippi,” says Ken Smith, vice president, system integrity. The staging center for the eastern effort was hosted by Mobile Gas in Mobile, Ala. Alagasco’s crews—working a week at a time before being relieved by a fresh team— were housed and fed by Mobile Gas at the facility. Normally 45 minutes from Bay St. Louis, the drive took as much as two to three hours each way for the first few weeks due to road work.

Overseeing the mutual assistance team for Bay St. Louis was Mark LaCroix, manager of labor relations for Alagasco. The group included welders, construction personnel, and service technicians. “Several portions of the city were completely gone,” he says. “Our team worked to isolate those gas lines and take them out of service, identify and repair leaks, and restore gas wherever possible. We tried to get schools and churches and other critical facilities up first. It was a complex job.”

Complicating the situation, work-ers who would normally handle such efforts for Bay St. Louis were charged with managing water and sewage restoration, LaCroix adds. “The EPA assigned them to handle that, so we were left with full responsibility for the gas lines,” he says.

LaCroix’s team met each morning to review what had been accom-plished the day before and set priori-ties for the coming day. The team also made sure other incidentals such as fuel and food were covered. “Every-one had to have enough fuel to get back and forth and enough food to get through the day,” says LaCroix.

At the end of five weeks, Alagasco and its partners had assisted in saving

80 percent of Bay St. Louis’ natural gas system. The experience brought home the impor-

tance of communications, Smith says. “Ev-eryone has to be working toward the same goal to get an emergency resolved quickly and effectively. Thanks to the national and regional mutual aid programs, there’s a system in place to get the process started when a crisis devel-ops and outside help is needed.”

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