Southern California Gas Co. officials announced Thursday that they plan to resume injecting natural gas at Aliso Canyon by late summer.
As they perform a battery of tests, gas company officials expect to have some wells certified by state regulators within coming months.
The announcement comes two days after an independent report forecasted that, without more gas at Aliso Canyon, the region could experience rolling blackouts. But a SoCalGas official said resuming injections wouldn’t rule out summer outages, and that the company is looking to secure winter supplies.
“The sooner we can get it back online it will help us,” said Bret Lane, SoCalGas chief operating officer. “We’re trying to balance the needs of this summer and also the needs of this coming winter.”
Regulators at the state Department of Conservation require a multi-step process to confirm that the field is safe for injections. First, the gas company must conduct noise and temperature tests on all 114 wells to determine if they’re leaking now. Then, before any injections can resume, each well must either be temporarily plugged or undergo a secondary set of tests to measure corrosion and other risk factors. Those that pass the second round can be used for injection.
The state has 21 engineers evaluating the company’s test results, said Department of Conservation spokesman Don Drysdale.
“It’s an all-out effort on our part and theirs to test these wells,” he said.
Environmentalists and some local residents were skeptical that the state or SoCalGas could quickly resume safe operations at the North San Fernando Valley field.
“Those are the same agencies, together with SoCalGas, that brought us the failure in the first place,” said Matt Pakucko, president of the neighborhood group Save Porter Ranch. “No one needs to go rushing around to get this place online.”
Until it was plugged in February, well SS-25 leaked roughly 94,000 metric tons of methane, the same climate impact as roughly 1.7 million passenger cars on the road for a year. Thousands of Porter Ranch families were displaced.
“Safety should be the number-one most important thing,” said Alexandra Nagy of the environmental nonprofit Food & Water Watch. “I think we need to do the most extensive review of these wells possible.”
With the facility at a fifth of its gas capacity, the region could see 14 days of blackouts this summer and more this winter, according to the report released by state power agencies Tuesday. Aliso Canyon supplies power generation stations in the region, especially during the peak hot summer months.
Also, its gas is used for heating and cooking at homes and businesses — the gas company’s “core customers.” Because those accounts have the highest priority, SoCalGas executive Lane said, officials are eyeing supplies for winter, when heating demands are at their highest.
