The Program Of Procuring Gas Supplies For Southern California From Inside And Outside The State
Authors: Jacobs W.M. 
Published: December 2007

JACOBS, W.M., President, Pacific Lighting Gas Supply Co.

PUBLICATION RIGHTS RESERVED

This paper is to be presented at the California Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME in Santa Barbara, California, on October 24–25, 1963, and is considered the property of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Permission to publish is hereby restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words, with no illustrations, unless the paper is specifically released to the press by the Editor of JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the Executive Secretary. Such abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is granted on request, providing proper credit is given that publication and the original presentation of the paper.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines with the paper.

Introduction

I will confine myself to a non-technical discussion of gas supply matters in the southern part of the state. While I believe there is similarity to the Northern California supply situation in some respects, there are many differences. I am not qualified to discuss gas supply as related to that area, in any event.

To lend perspective to my remarks, I would like first to identify our Pacific Lighting System, which serves Southern California. The parent or holding company, Pacific Lighting Corp., was formed in San Francisco in 1886 to engage in the gas lighting business in that city. Later,, it acquired interests in what were then some small utility companies in Southern California. Often, these were plants that needed physical rehabilitation to keep pace with the advancing art of manufacturing gas, and that needed financial rehabilitation too. Skipping over the many years of corporate mergers and growth, the system now has three gas utility companies [besides several recently formed non-utility subsidiaries]. Two, Southern California Gas Co. and Southern Counties Gas Co., constitute the largest gas distribution system in the country. The third, Pacific Lighting Gas Supply Co., transmits and stores gas for it affiliated distribution companies. Centralized in the latter company is the gas supply procurement function for the system. About 2 3/4 million m are served at retail, and gas is supplied at wholesale to San Diego and Long Beach which, in turn, serve about 400,000 m more. Altogether, keeping this huge market in adequate gas supply is quite an undertaking; and the rapid and continuous growth of the area means we must anticipate and plan well into the future.

SYSTEM OPERATING CHARACTERISTICS

I think it will also aid perspective if I briefly describe some of our operating characteristics. Most of our customers are the homes, stores, institutions, small factories, and such, which require gas service on a firm or continuous basis. These fine customers are the backbone of our gas business, and we like them But their use of gas varies widely between summer and winter, because nearly all use gas for space heating. In fact, the firm service demand peak on a cold day can be about seven times as great as on a summer day, and this ratio is continually increasing. Expressed in gas man's terms, our firm service has an annual load factor of about 35 per cent. This means we must be prepared to meet high winter peaks and deliver to low summer valleys in our firm service load curve, whereas most of our gas supply is available at nearly a constant level of flow.