SFO Cuts Back Energy Use After Almost Running Out Of Jet Fuel

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SFO Cuts Back Energy Use After Almost Running Out Of Jet Fuel

Jan 22, 2001

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is exempt from rolling blackouts in California's continuing energy crisis but is making its contribution by curtailing lighting and cooling systems. The airport also has brought emergency generators online.

On Friday SFO faced running out of jet fuel when the airport's supplier shut down the pipelines that feed the airport nearly 3 million gallons a day. The reserve tanks were also approaching empty.

Power needs generally drop by 2,000 megawatts during weekends in California, but reserves dipped below 1.5 percent both Saturday and Sunday, resulting in Stage 3 alerts and urgent requests for Californians to conserve energy.

Stage 3 alerts, the most severe and the prelude to rolling blackouts, were declared Saturday and Sunday and were to remain in effect until midnight today.

"It's a big deal because Sunday is rock-bottom usage. It's typically the lowest time. This means we have a very interesting week in store," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, a North Carolina-based company that sells electricity to the California market.

California's electricity system has been in turmoil for months. The state's largest utilities, operating under a rate freeze imposed under the state's 1996 deregulation law, have been unable to pass on to customers the spiraling costs of wholesale power.

Since June, SoCal Edison and PG&E, which serve 25 million people between them, have lost some USD$11 billion.

More than 100,000 people fly into or out of SFO each day. "Flight schedules around the world would be in chaos, and the tons of cargo shipped through the airport would go nowhere," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Airport director John Martin, worried about dwindling supplies, tracked down San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in Washington, D.C., where he is attending a Conference of Mayors meeting, the newspaper said.

"The mayor received a call from airport officials and they explained the situation with the pipeline," Brown spokesman Ron Vinson said.

Brown called his friend John Burton, a San Francisco Democrat and president of the state Senate.

"What was said I'm not sure," Vinson said. "The next thing we knew, the pipeline came back into operation."

SFO is supplied by two pipelines, a 12-inch line that runs from a Richmond refinery to the airport and a 10-inch line that runs to storage tanks in Brisbane.

SFO's reserve tanks hold up to 18 million gallons, or enough for about six days, Wilson said. The airport would have run dry by Friday night if the tanks couldn't be refilled.

Officials at San Jose and Oakland international airports said they were not facing fuel shortages.

http://news.airwise.com/stories/2001/01/980167948.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 22, 2001


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