The snowstorm that blew through New Mexico with an arctic blast in the first week of February, leaving an estimated 32,000 homes and businesses without natural gas for several days, tested the ability of an interstate utility system — and found it wanting.

Frozen gas well heads, ruptured waterlines and freezing homes stretched 2,000 miles across at least 16 states from New Mexico and Texas northeast to Connecticut and Illinois. The storm took down power utility companies in Texas and disrupted production, ultimately affecting the ability of natural-gas processing plants to pack enough of the hydrocarbon into interstate pipelines for the thousands of people who needed it.

The temperatures stayed below freezing for 80 to 90 hours straight from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4 in Northern New Mexico, according to the National Weather Service.

New Mexicans finally have heat and hot water again. But they still have a lot of questions about what happened and, more importantly, why it took so long to fix. Why, in one of the largest natural-gas-producing states in the nation, where customers use less than a 10th of the gas produced, were so many people cut off from the resource for so long?

"There are ways of doing things. You have to make sure nobody, but nobody, is left without gas for six days," said Carlos Martinez Sr., 82, the former distribution supervisor for the Santa Fe area when it was served by the Southern Union Gas Co. in the 1970s.

New Mexico Gas Co. officials are trying to provide answers and look at what must be done to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. The natural-gas system is complex, with different companies owning different segments, and a lack of communication between them.

Investigations under way

More than 800 people had filed claims with New Mexico Gas Co. by Friday, and more than 1,200 had filed claims with just one insurance company — State Farm Insurance — by that date.

Meanwhile, the House Conservation Committee, chaired by Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, held a hearing Feb. 7 on the gas crisis, and the full Senate heard the same testimony Friday from New Mexico Gas and state officials.

The state Public Regulation Commission is conducting an investigation and hiring a third-party contractor to do an independent investigation into the gas crisis. The PRC regulates natural-gas companies along with other utilities. As the regulatory agency, the PRC has the power to change the plan (Rule 21) that the commission had approved, and New Mexico Gas Co. followed, when it curtailed and later cut off gas to customers. That rule says, in part, "the company shall be held harmless for loss of service to End-Users arising from interruptions or curtailments" as long as the company follows the plan.

Dependent on others

New Mexico Gas Co. is responsible for purchasing natural gas and delivering it to customers as they need it. That's what customers expect when they pay their monthly bills. And for decades, except for some minor outages like during the last bitter freeze in 1971, whoever owned the gas company has delivered.

New Mexico Gas has only one storage facility in a salt dome at Andrews, Texas. It had a second one in Albuquerque, a deep well, according to the company's chief engineer, Debbie Brunt. But over time, the well fell apart and the gas began migrating. Storing gas requires certain geologic features, such as the salt domes in southeastern New Mexico. But if the company had more facilities there, they still would have faced the same set of problems getting the gas into the interstate pipeline in early February.

While the company can purchase all its gas in New Mexico, that gas still has to be gathered, cleaned up at a processing plant and compressed into lines for customers to receive it. New Mexico Gas doesn't own the processing plants or gathering lines. In addition, a lot of the gas delivered to its lines is via much larger interstate pipelines such as the El Paso Natural Gas pipeline and Transwestern pipeline. They in turn require some electricity for parts of the system, powered by coal-fired and natural-gas plants in Texas and elsewhere. Last week's storm affected every part of the system, a phenomenon many in the business for decades, such as Brunt, had never seen.

Lessons learned

The lessons learned from the crisis are many.

New Mexico Gas should have accepted help earlier from the state, admitted Ken Oostman, vice president of technical services, to the House Conservation Committee.

Company officials say they'll be talking to suppliers, power producers and pipeline operators to figure out how everyone can communicate better.

The natural-gas system had weaknesses in design that left it vulnerable to one large winter storm, such as not enough backup power for compressors and backup supplies that couldn't be utilized. Engineers, suppliers and gas purchasers will have to figure out solutions if the same situation is to be avoided in the future.

A lot of New Mexico residents want the company to develop a much better way of communicating with customers. During last week's crisis, the company wasn't set up to take advantage of many readily available communications systems. New Mexico Gas did not use popular social media (Twitter, Facebook), an e-mail alert list nor an automated calling system to help warn their customers of what lay ahead. In addition, while New Mexico Gas called large-scale customers to curtail use, they were not set up to alert other smaller businesses.

One couple, Alcalde greenhouse growers Kim and Steve Martin, were upset because they had specifically asked to be notified if there was going to be interruptions in gas service, so they could protect plants. But that request was on their account when the company was owned by Public Service Company of New Mexico. The request didn't roll over when New Mexico Gas Co. bought the gas portion of the utility.

Some have criticized Gov. Susana Martinez for not doing more, earlier. At a recent public meeting in Española, one woman asked why Martinez had not handed out heaters and blankets.

Residents also learned a valuable lesson hearkening back to a time when there wasn't such a steady supply of gas or electricity — nothing is infallible, and a backup plan is always wise.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.