On March 24th, SGA Natural Gas Association convened nearly 30 emergency management, operations, storage, and gas control leaders from across the natural gas industry for a full-day Mutual Aid Roundtable held in conjunction with the Spring Gas Conference. Representatives from 20 organizations, including LDCs, interstate pipelines, municipal utilities, and national association partners from AGA, gathered to share lessons from Winter Storm Fern and strengthen the industry’s collective resilience framework.
The day covered seven topic areas:
- Internal mutual aid governance and RFA processes
- External stakeholder and regulator coordination
- Gas control and peak-day flow management
- Peak shaving and storage strategies
- Communication technology and workforce safety
- Integration of supply and manpower planning
- Federal coordination with DOE and PHMSA
The conversation was candid and productive. Key themes that emerged include the need to pre-define internal decision chains and RFA authority before the next event, not during it; the critical role of storage and LNG assets that, for some operators, supply nearly half of peak-day demand; and the opportunity to move from reactive federal reporting toward a proactive, standardized data framework that positions the industry as a credible, first-call resource for regulators.
SGA will use the insights from this event to refresh the 2024 Mutual Aid Best Practices guide and develop a new companion resource focused on storage, peak shaving, and gas control in emergency conditions.
Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed. This is exactly the kind of peer-driven, outcomes-focused work that defines what SGA is here to do — Share. Grow. Advance.
Internal Procedures & Mutual Aid Governance
The group examined how the National Mutual Aid Agreement, a streamlined five-year framework covering indemnity, billing, and risk, functions as the backbone of gas mutual aid, and where internal company processes are falling short.
A recurring theme was the absence of pre-defined decision chains: many utilities are uncertain who holds RFA signing authority, which department owns the process, and what specific thresholds should trigger a mutual aid request.
Participants also discussed the persistent challenge of OQ reciprocity across state lines, where differing regulatory requirements can delay or prevent out-of-state crews from working even when they are the closest available resource.
External Stakeholders & Communication
The discussion on stakeholder engagement reinforced a consistent lesson from recent winter storms: utilities with pre-built relationships, EOC liaisons, joint exercises with local emergency managers, and regular blue-sky communication with state regulators responded more effectively and communicated more credibly during Fern than those engaging these partners for the first time during the event.
The group identified the need for unified outage definitions and consistent metrics that align what utilities report to their PSCs with what SGA and AGA are reporting to DOE, and discussed best practices for Joint Information Center coordination to manage public narrative during major events.
Gas Control & Peak-Day Flow Management
This session, led by Tiffany Buffington of BHE GT&S, provided the room with a rare inside view of how transmission systems are managed during extreme peak days.
Participants learned how linepack, pack-and-draft operations, nomination management, and OFO enforcement work together to protect system integrity and downstream LDC service. A key insight for distribution-side attendees was understanding how gas control rooms on the pipeline side make real-time decisions and what data they need from LDC counterparts to do so effectively.
The session also introduced the concept of “control-room mutual aid”, whether sharing expertise, backup control center support, or cross-system coordination.
Peak Shaving & Storage Strategies
This session, led by Jacob Abraham of Williams, highlighted how LNG, propane-air, and high-deliverability underground storage are not emergency backups but front-line reliability tools, with some operators relying on storage for 40–50% of peak-day demand.
Participants shared operational stories from Fern covering when they initiated vaporization or storage withdrawals, what constraints they hit (trucking logistics, power supply at LNG facilities, staffing), and where coordination across interconnects added resilience. The conversation also opened the door to “supply-side mutual aid”, LNG trucking to neighboring systems, shared mobile vaporizers, and coordinated storage withdrawals across interconnects.
SGA noted that this work builds directly on the recently formed SGA Peak Shaving Taskforce, which ensures this knowledge has a dedicated home in the industry.
Communication Technology & Workforce Safety
The technology discussion covered two layers: association-level tools and utility-level systems.
On the association side, AlertMedia has meaningfully improved SGA’s ability to rapidly poll member status and feed DOE briefings during events, but participants identified clear improvement opportunities, including cleaner contact lists, sharper question definitions (particularly around what “no curtailments” means relative to firm vs. interruptible load), regional targeting to reduce notification fatigue, and time-zone-aware response deadlines.
On the utility side, several operators described mature electronic outage management systems with mobile workflows that have dramatically improved restoration speed and tracking.
The unresolved challenge: how do mutual aid crews from other companies effectively use unfamiliar proprietary systems during a large multi-company response?
On workforce, the group discussed predefined business continuity pay policies, volunteer versus mandatory deployment models, ICS/NIMS training continuity as staff turnover occurs, and the importance of contingency plans for serious incidents during restoration, including mental health and CISM resources as standard ERP components.
Integration: People, Molecules & Messages
One of the most forward-looking sessions of the day focused on why mutual aid crews, storage and LNG decisions, and gas control communication are still planned in organizational silos, and what it would take to bring them together into one integrated resilience framework.
Participants discussed scenarios where strong storage positions reduced the need for mutual aid crews, and cases where mutual aid labor freed up operators to fully utilize constrained peak-shaving assets.
The group agreed that any updated best-practices guide should explicitly pair supply-side and workforce-side planning, and several participants expressed interest in joint tabletop exercises that force these two worlds to make decisions together.
Federal Coordination & Industry Intelligence
The final substantive session, led by Suzanne Ogle, recapped SGA’s role during Fern, including daily DOE Emergency Support Function calls, AlertMedia-driven data aggregation, and being treated as a trusted gas intelligence source by federal partners.
The discussion surfaced both the industry’s strength (consistent participation and credible reporting during the event) and its opportunity: moving from reactive, event-driven federal reporting to a proactive standing framework built on a short list of agreed metrics, storage utilization, peak-shaving asset status, mutual aid deployed, outages, and restoration timelines, that positions the industry as the first call for regulators, not a secondary source
