Damaged pipeline causes widespread natural gas outage in Seguin, surrounding areas

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

Impact estimated to take several days

(Seguin) — The entire city is still currently without gas service to homes and businesses.

CenterPoint Energy customers continue to experience a natural gas outage throughout Seguin and McQueeney.

CenterPoint estimates the entire service territory will be restored in approximately 4 to 5 days. Some customers may have service restored sooner than others. The earliest CenterPoint Energy estimates that any customers will have gas turned back on is sometime Wednesday afternoon. 

Several days needed for repairs is leaving folks on edge especially business owners and those restaurants who were forced to shut down just prior to the lunch hour on Tuesday. The outage is said to be affecting more than 4,300 customers. The outage is the result of damage to another company’s pipeline that serves the towns.

In a statement to its customers, CenterPoint Energy shared that it is focused “on providing service to critical facilities, such as hospitals, and will attempt to secure backup gas service to such critical facilities while the pipeline supplying natural gas to the towns is being repaired.”

To ensure warmth, Seguin ISD parents were also reminded to bundle up their children these final three days before Spring Break as local campuses are also being impacted. They did provide assurances that meals will also be made available to the students.

Tal Centers, vice president for Texas Gas at CenterPoint Energy, says more than 200 employees and contractors have been called in to help with the restoration process – a process that again provides no exact timeframe for customers.

“Safety will be our number-one priority as we work to restore natural gas service to impacted customers as safely and quickly as possible. As part of our safety procedures, we will start the process of turning off each customer’s natural gas meter. Once the pipeline company finalizes its repairs, our crews will need to manually turn each meter back on,” said Centers.

CenterPoint officials say although the  200 plus technicians are in Seguin working to restore service, it will take time. That’s because all meters in the city have to be manually turned off before the system can be reactivated and eventually restored.

In fact, CenterPoint had employees working throughout the night with hopes that all meters can be turned off by noon today. Moving forward, customers are being reminded that they will need to be home as the technicians will have to turn each natural gas meter back on. The technicians are expected to make 3 visits and will leave a door hanger so that customers can call and schedule a time.   

Once the main transmission line is repaired, officials say the system can then be recharged. At that point, CenterPoint will commence the individual manual turn-ons of each meter within the system.  

For safety reasons, the company urges customers not to turn any valves or tamper with the natural gas meter. They say opening or turning any valves could allow air to enter the natural gas lines, which would hinder the restoration process.

As always, they say if you smell natural gas, customers should leave the area immediately on foot and call CenterPoint Energy at 866-275-5252 and 911 to report; and not turn on or operate anything that might cause a spark like using light switches or cellphones.

View article on SeguinToday.com