The Advertiser: Moomba gas supply cut [16jul06]

THE State Government has demanded a full report from Santos over the latest shutdown of its Moomba gas plant.The action forced the supplier to implement emergency measures to share the available supply between SA and NSW.
While there was no immediate threat of restrictions to SA gas consumers, NSW gas users were in a more precarious position because of the lack of storage capacity in its distribution system.
Energy Minister Pat Conlon said while SA avoided restrictions during this latest event, it did not mean he was "comfortable" with the shutdown.
"All the advice we had was . . . there was no risk to anyone's gas supply," he said. "We had more than a day's worth of line capacity we could fall back on.

"In addition to that, there was a capacity to draw gas from storage. We monitored it closely and never at any stage was there a risk of me having to issue any restrictions."
Mr Conlon said the Government had demanded full details of what had happened at the plant and what was being done to ensure it was not repeated.
While Santos had advised the Government of the disruption and had adhered to its stated timeline of restoring full flow, any threat to supply was a matter of concern. "For SA, a reliable supply of gas is very important," Mr Conlon said.
The gas plant went into a complete shutdown about noon on Tuesday, with production halted for 18 hours.
The shutdown resulted in several emergency telephone conferences on Tuesday night of Santos executives, gas users and distributors in SA and NSW, Mr Conlon and various officers from his department and the Office of the Technical Regulator.
Agreement was reached for the allocation of gas between SA and NSW while the shutdown continued. Arrangements were also put in place for AGL to obtain gas from Victoria via the SEA gas pipeline, allowing more gas to be diverted to NSW because of its limited storage capacity.
The shutdown is the longest since January, 2004, when the Moomba plant was damaged in a large explosion. On that occasion, production was hit for more than six weeks, with many SA businesses forced to slow down because of limited gas supply.
Santos spokeswoman Kathryn Mitchell said the shutdown was caused by the failure of an instrument in an air system. While it had been repaired, the company was continuing to investigate why it failed and would report to the government "in due course".
Ms Mitchell said because gas was now readily available from other sources outside the state, it was "highly unlikely" SA would ever experience a gas "outage" if production at Moomba was halted for some time.
"In 2004 during the shutdown, the only customers that were impacted were industrial users and they were only restricted," she said. "The system is not infallible, but it has lots of back-up in it, unlike the Longford days."
While Mr Conlon is not critical of Santos's handling of the incident, Australia's largest distributor of natural gas, Envestra, is critical of information blackout.
"It's astounding that 24 hours later, we don't know what happened at the plant," managing director Ian Little said.
"It's untenable in the modern world of energy market competition that we don't have a transparent and accountable process.
"The State Government has tried to bring Santos to account in the past but has been brushed aside."