Description:

One of CAENZ’s principal areas of activity is developing a more thorough understanding of the resilience of New Zealand infrastructure to natural hazards and the inter-dependencies between any vulnerabilities and the wider economy. The natural gas supply system is a significant part of this infrastructure and little publicized work has been undertaken to investigate the impact of sustained failures within the supply system on gas availability and the consequent impact on gas consumers, in particular the electricity a wider impact on electricity consumers.

This lack of investigation is due in part to the high level of reliability of gas supplies. Whilst gas supplies may be crucial to many commercial and industrial consumers, relatively few have back-up measures in place to replace gas if it were not available. In some cases this is because the consumers’ operations require the particular properties of natural gas but in most cases it is due to the costs of making provision for back-up fuels which is deemed unnecessary given the high reliability of natural gas supply. However, this is not to say that situations cannot occur which result in a sustained shortfall of gas supplies. It is the intention of this investigation to provide a better understanding of the impact of breakdowns in the gas supply system on the availability of gas to consumers and the consequent impact on their operations.

Specific attention is given to the impact of gas availability on electricity generation and the interplay between gas and electricity demand when gas is in short supply.