In Response to “Analysis: Arctic chill exposes weakness of U.S. natural gas system”
Written by Michael Vrtis President of Realgy Energy Services in response to the Reuters article Analysis: Arctic chill exposes weakness of U.S. natural gas system
As Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet said about the financial crisis; “You don’t know who’s naked until the tide goes out.”
Same goes for any extreme event; with this current arctic blast the need for heat has exposed how market forces and planning work in the natural gas market.
Nobody did without gas, but some had to pay more. The alternative is to build pipelines and storage to provide for gas to accommodate such very extreme weather (last time was over 20 years ago) and incur the cost of that infrastructure in higher transportation and delivery rates.
Realgy provides fixed pricing and our ManagedPriceTM and PriceWatchTM services to shield our customers from the sudden price risk of such events.
Supply and demand worked and the price is already moderating with the temperatures and everyone stayed warm that had gas; doesn’t sound like a very weak system to me; but certainly improvements are warranted in places.
Stay warm
Check out The Reuters article: Analysis: Arctic chill exposes weakness of U.S. natural gas system