Just How Bad Was It?

It was the 2nd coldest March on record for the British Isles. The Motley Fool is reporting:

Imagine your energy bill increasing by 50% in one day. Pretty scary, eh?

Back in March, this is exactly what happened... in England. In a single day, natural gas prices spiked by 50% there, all because of a failed water pump. As much as this could be considered a fluke accident, there were several factors that led to this single, minute event causing the worlds eighth largest natural gas market to its knees. Let's take a look at what happened, how the U.S. can prevent this from happening at home, and what it will mean for U.S. gas companies. 

March of 2013 was the second coldest March ever recorded in the U.K. The unusually cold weather that late in the season led to higher than normal gas consumption. With so much in use and a rather fixed supply, U.K. gas supplies were dwindling. On March 22, a water pump failed and halted deliveries from the UK-Belguim Interconnector, a pipe that delivered about 40 million cubic meters of gas to Great Britain. The shutdown of this gas pipe was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. Gas supplies were so short that storage was down to less than two days' worth of supply, which ultimately led gas prices to surge 50% within hours of trading on the London exchanges.

Of interest, I posted this yesterday (how prescient, smile):

Peak Oil: some interesting data points from an article at The Oil Drum:

• how close did the British come to running out of natural gas this past winter: 6 hours (see comments at the linked article)