News on the day of the blast had indicated total supply at 350 billion cubic feet, but a day later down to 300 billion cubic feet, without making a single reference to the discrepancy in the light of the explosion and 4.5 hour fire at the Macomb compressor station.
The Detroit News, below, repeats as others have that the site of the fire is where Consumers Energy has 64% of its supply, which would be, theoretically, 224 billion cubic feet of 350 billion cubic feet, if that's truly how much they have. Yet the story below says the Ray Compressor Station, Consumers' largest storage field, has only 41.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage. If that's really true, Consumers Energy total supply was never 350 billion cubic feet, let alone 300 billion cubic feet, but barely 64.4 billion cubic feet.
Do you know how far that would go? It certainly wouldn't supply the natural gas needs of Consumers' customer base of 1.8 million. In fact, it would supply just 413,000 average single family households for one year, that's it.
None of these stories add up.
Someone is not telling the truth, either about the real quantity of total available natural gas stored by Consumers Energy for its customers, or about how much gas was lost in the controlled burn, or both.
The unprecedented and repeated appeals by Consumers Energy and Michigan Governor Whitmer to residents of Michigan to dial back their thermostats to 65F during a massive below-zero blizzard which shut down hundreds of schools and businesses for almost a week suggest that Consumers Energy never had the massive supply it claimed and that Michigan's population was at real risk of disaster.
Consumers said the Ray Compressor Station, where the fire occurred, accounts for roughly 64 percent of its supply. ...
The fire erupted at 10:33 a.m. at Consumers Energy's Ray Natural Gas Compressor Station on the 69300 block of Omo Road, north of 32 Mile. ...
Consumers said despite the blast and burn-off of natural gas, the utility had filled 15 large storage facilities with extra supply for their 1.8 million natural gas customers across the state in preparation for winter fuel usage.
Personnel on hand who handle emergencies at the Ray station contacted emergency responders, who contained the fire while letting it burn until 3 p.m., said Garrick Rochow, the company's senior vice president of operations.
" ... It's the best way to make sure all of the gas is used up," Rochow said of the contained burned [sic, read "contained burn"]. "Next, we'll do a root-cause evaluation ... It's too early to know what caused this." ...
Consumers Energy's Ray Compressor Station on Omo Road, just north of 32 Mile in Armada Township, has 41.2 billion cubic feet of storage. It is the company's largest underground natural gas storage and compressor facility. (Photo: Todd McInturf, The Detroit News) ...
The blast that accompanied the fire was felt miles away. Sherry Ventimiglia lives about two miles from the Ray station, said she thought something had happened to her home.
"It felt like something fell against the house, like a tree or something like that," Ventimiglia said. "It shook the whole house. ... I literally went running through my whole house to make sure nothing had exploded or fallen. It was very intense."
