On August 16, 2011, FERC and NERC released a staff report with recommendations to help prevent a recurrence of rolling blackouts and natural gas curtailments experienced by customers in the Southwest during extreme cold weather the first week of February 2011. Concluding a six-month inquiry, the task force found a majority of the electric outages and gas shortages were due to weather-related causes. In total, approximately 1.3 million electric customers did not have service at the peak of the event on February 2, and a total of 4.4 million were affected over the course of the event from February 2 through February 4. Natural gas customers also experienced extensive curtailments of service during the event. These curtailments were longer in duration than the electric outages because relighting customers’ equipment has to be accomplished manually at each customer’s location. Local distribution companies (LDCs) interrupted gas service to more than 50,000 customers in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. New Mexico was the hardest hit with outages of over 30,000 customers. On May 9, 2011, FERC and NERC announced that their staffs would create a joint task force to combine their separate inquiries.
