Don Steinke (“Phase out natural gas,” Our Readers’ Views, April 9) noted that 70 percent of our natural gas comes from Canada, as an argument against continued partnership with Northwest Natural Gas. But he has actually raised one of the advantages of our state’s natural gas supply.
The region’s interstate pipeline, Northwest Pipeline, is uniquely bidirectional, capable of taking wholesale gas from either the north (Canada) or the south (the Rockies, California, the San Juan Basin). No region in the U.S. has better access to abundant, competitively priced natural gas. So, to writer Steinke’s point, the reason customers here get mostly Canadian gas is that it is the most competitively priced. But if gas from southern and eastern U.S. sources is cheaper due to market conditions, it will flow to our gas distributing utilities, such as to Northwest Natural Gas.
