The Oil Drum

64 comments on GoM progress over the weekend

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Nate Hagens on October 12, 2005 - 10:16pm

After looking at that weather map, there are a series of lateral stripes in the winter forecast with East Coast (particularly norht of NYC) being coldest in country and west coast being warmer. The northeast uses alot of heating oil for home heating compared to the midwest where natural gas is more prevalent. When assuming a much colder than normal winter for northeast, that would be less severe on shortages than a slightly colder winter in midwest. The states of Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusets, Rhode Island and Vermont consume .02%,.16%,.9%,2.48%,.4% and .06% respectively for a total of 4.02% of the nations natural gas for home heating. The midwest block of Illinois, Ohio and Michigan consumes 9.32%,6.76% and 7.59% respectively for a total of 23.67% of nation. (California is first with 9.68%). EIA link here
(the population of the northeast states above is 14.2million vs IL/MI/OH is 34.1 million so nat gas is 6 times more use vs 2.5 x the population - if we add New York at 8.13% of national both population blocks are identical and we have 23.67% vs 12.15%. Midwest states uses twice the nat gas as east coast (at least) for home heating. I will follow this post with nat gas for electricity use.

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Nate Hagens on October 12, 2005 - 10:36pm

Natural Gas use for electricity by region is also quite variant. Texas, California, and Florida are by far the largest users with 28.31%,13.74% and 10.42% respectively (those 3 states have > 52% of total in US with 25.74% of population).
Repeating the above analysis (on colder than expected winter) in Northeast, the block of Maine, NH,CT,MA,RI, and VT uses 1.18%,.56%,.83%,3.3%,.82% and 0% respectively for a total of 6.69% of nations nat gas for electricity usage. Adding NY at 5.08% the entire northeast block is 11.77% of total while having 11.72% of population. The bottom line then is that nat gas for home heating is where New England has an advantage (well, if you call using heating oil an advantage...but methinks this winter it will be...)

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Joseph Somsel on October 13, 2005 - 12:53pm

Good research and analysis.

Lets breakdown the annual use into seasonal usage for electric fuel.

The Northeast utilities are winter peakers meaning that their natural gas usage for electric generation will be higher in the winter than in the summer.

The Biggest users (CA, TX, and FL) are summer peakers and use their gas as electric fuel during the summers for air conditioning.

Looks like the point is that the fuel oil users need to keep the tank topped up this winter. If there is a gas delivery problem, the electricity is at risk in the NE.