Governor Raimondo’s office announced this afternoon in a Media Advisory that the Governor will be joined tomorrow by state legislators and local elected leaders in Newport to discuss the findings of the Division of Public Utilities & Carriers’ report into the gas outages on Aquidneck Island.

According to the media advisory, the Governor will encourage parties to work together to ensure greater accountability of National Grid. 

Following the media event on Tuesday morning, What’s Up Newp will bring you details and reaction from the event here on whatsupnewp.com.

Update – VIDEO: Governor Raimondo, local officials discuss gas outage report

The Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (RIPUC) issued a report last week “describing the causes of the natural gas outage on Aquidneck Island on January 21, 2019”.

According to the report, the gas service outage on Aquidneck Island was the result of a low-pressure condition on the “G-System” branch of the Algonquin pipeline, the portion of the interstate natural gas pipeline that serves Aquidneck Island and much of Rhode Island owned and operated by Enbridge, Inc. The low-pressure condition was reportedly the result of three separate precipitating factors that each contributed to cause the low-pressure condition.

Those three precipitating factors that occurred on the morning of January 21st were as follows, according to the report;

  • Demand for natural gas was in excess of contractual limits by many of Algonquin’s customers along the Algonquin G-System, driven by sudden low temperatures;
  • The uninterruptible power system at the liquified natural gas storage and vaporization facility at Fields Point in Providence, owned and operated by National Grid LNG, failed, shutting down the vaporizers and causing a sudden and very large increase in demand for gas from the Algonquin pipeline into the Providence area; demand that would otherwise have been met by vaporized LNG from the Fields Point facility;
  • A valve located on the Algonquin pipeline at a meter station in Weymouth, Massachusetts operated by Enbridge malfunctioned. The malfunction stemmed from a programming error that caused the valve to repeatedly open and close restricting the flow of gas when the system operators attempted to inject more into the Algonquin pipeline that feeds gas into the G-System.

For more of our coverage on this topic, visit Gas Emergency.