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Massive Gas Outage Threatens Millions Of Americans’ Energy Supplies Amid Arctic Storm
HuffPost
Emergency shutdown at a natural gas storage facility in Washington state threatens mass blackouts.
A massive storage facility in Washington state serving the natural gas network that provides electricity and heating fuel to millions of Americans from the Pacific Northwest down to New Mexico went down Saturday evening.
The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in Lewis County, roughly two hours south of Seattle, suffered a complete outage, triggering an emergency on the 1,500-mile Northwest Pipeline that ships gas to power plants and heating networks across a region currently struck by arctic weather.
The storage facility provided enough gas to power upward of 6 million homes if it was all used to generate electricity. The gas network also supplies heating furnaces as cities like Seattle freeze in the coldest temperatures in the city in 14 years.
The city of Ellensburg in mountainous central Washington issued a statement Saturday urging residents to conserve natural gas.
Gusty winds had already caused scattered power outages across Oregon as the winter storm sprayed the region with snow.