Legislators set to pry into gas outage

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Rarely do you see hearings with a company’s top brass and even some elected officials placed on the hot seat, but Monday morning Representatives from the state’s House Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Committee will start asking tough questions to find out how 32,000 residents were left without natural gas.

"I think we need to find out whether someone needs to be held responsible,” said Rep. Al Park (D-Bernalillo County) "How did this happen? Why did this happen? If we don't have adequate gas reserves or a pipeline issue. I want to know what we have to do to make sure it doesn't happen again."

New Mexico Gas Company has maintained its supplier encountered electrical outages in Texas which slowed compression stations from sending gas to the west.

"This was a monumental storm that hit us. I mean the worst weather in 40 years to hit new mexico. We saw it coming, we prepared for it in the amount of gas we purchased to supply our system to make sure we had more than enough," said Ken Oostman, the Vice President of Technical Services for New Mexico Gas Company.

Oostman added a full investigation will get underway once all customers have their gas back.

"We will look at every root cause we can identify and we will work with our suppliers and all the other stakeholders in this process so we can fix as many of the things that contributed to this outage as possible," New Mexico Gas Company President Annette Gardiner said.

"After this meeting I think we'll have a better and clearer picture on what we need to do in the future," said Park.