Some New Yorkers Will Soon Get the Gas They’ve Been Waiting Months For
Some New Yorkers Will Soon Get the Gas They’ve Been Waiting Months For
(Bloomberg) -- Some New Yorkers that have been waiting for months to get natural gas service will see their homes and businesses hooked up by the end of October because of an emergency order issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Utility owner National Grid Plc is rushing to comply with Cuomo’s order and expects to line up enough gas to reconnect about 1,100 customers within the next two weeks, said John Bruckner, president of the company’s New York unit. The utility has already contacted more than half of the customers that qualify for a hookup under the order and will have reached out to all of them by the end of the week, he said.
Read More: National Grid CEO Says Working With Cuomo, Despite Investigation
Cuomo and London-based National Grid have been locked in a battle over natural gas since New York shot down a $1 billion pipeline project that would’ve expanded the company’s access to more supplies. In response, the company imposed a moratorium on all new hookups and encouraged customers to write to Cuomo’s office in support of the project. Cuomo fired back last week, saying the company had “acted in bad faith.” He ordered it to immediately resume connections to some customers.
“We’ve allocated resources that enable us to address all these customers and connect them all in a very short period of time,” Bruckner said in a phone interview Tuesday. The company is trying to reduce gas demand from existing users through energy efficiency programs in order to accommodate the hookups, he said.
While Cuomo’s hookup order benefits customers with inactivated accounts looking for re-connection, National Grid has a backlog of 2,600 applications for new or expanded service that remain on hold. Those represent about 20,000 commercial, residential and multifamily units in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, according to the company.
The clash in New York is the latest flash point in a war on natural gas that has escalated across the U.S., with cities including Berkeley and San Jose, California, banning the fuel in new homes and businesses altogether. Gas pipeline projects across the eastern U.S. are similarly facing intensifying opposition from local governments and environmentalists.
New York alone has quashed plans for two major gas pipelines on environmental grounds. Both National Grid and Consolidated Edison Inc. stopped accepting new applications for service in parts of their New York territories because of a shortage of space on existing lines. Come winter, some National Grid customers in the Hamptons and other parts of Long Island may get their gas from truck deliveries because of pipeline constraints.
The moratorium that National Grid imposed has already compelled some customers to turn to electricity instead. Bruckner said a few of the homes and businesses the company contacted about service since Cuomo’s order had already replaced their gas-powered heating equipment with electric ones.
--With assistance from Christopher Martin.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gerson Freitas Jr. in São Paulo at gfreitasjr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Pratish Narayanan
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