California’s Natural Gas Storage Facility Can Reopen

In California, the state's Department of Conservation (DOC) announced that following months of rigorous inspections and testing of wells at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, and upon implementation of multiple new safety protocols, state engineering and safety enforcement officials have concluded that the facility is once again safe to operate and can reopen, albeit at a greatly reduced capacity. 

The DOC related that approximately 60% of the wells have now been taken out of operation and isolated from the facility, with the remaining wells now subject to stringent new retrofit and inspection requirements. The DOC said that reopening Aliso Canyon will help prevent an energy shortage in Southern California, while the new limits on its storage capacity will help ensure public safety. 

The DOC noted that pursuant to a recently enacted state law, the state's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) and the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) were required to concur that the facility is safe before gas injections could resume. According to the DOC, a stringent testing and analysis process for the facility had been developed in close coordination with nationally recognized experts from the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs research stations. 

The DOGGR had suspended injections of natural gas into the Aliso Canyon reservoir after a major leak occurred in October 2015. The leak was not permanently sealed until four months later. Southern California Gas Company, which owns and operates the facility, had requested permission to resume natural gas injections last November. Despite the DOC and DOGGR findings that the facility is safe to reopen, the DOC observed that an investigation into the actual cause of the leak remains ongoing, with the PUC keeping open a proceeding that will decide the future of the facility.