Analysis of vulnerability of fuel supply systems in gas-consuming regions due to failure of critical gas industry facilities

Abstract

The paper proposes a new approach to the analysis of the vulnerability of fuel supply to regions that consume natural gas when critical facilities (CFs) of the gas industry stop operating. The feature distinguishing this approach from the known ones is that it simultaneously considers indices of a natural gas share in the structure of regional fuel and energy balance and configuration of the main gas pipeline network that serves the regions. This approach involves specialized multi-iterative studies, which have made it possible for the first time to identify the gas industry facilities that are critical for gas supply to the regions. Investigation of various shutdown options for these facilities determines the regions, which are most susceptible to natural gas shortages in the event of emergencies in the gas industry.The list of such regions is ranked according to the degree of vulnerability of fuel supply systems. Findings indicate that the vulnerability of these systems in about 70% of all gas-consuming regions in Russia upon a shutdown of specific critical gas facilities is 5% or more. At the same time, for some of these regions, failure of any CF can cause a 100% gas shortage. The principles for the formation of a ranked list of the gas transmission network CFs are presented on the example of Russia. The ranking is performed by the value of the total gas shortage for consumers, which may arise when a particular facility in the gas transmission network stops operating. Critical facilities of gas transmission network are compared by the number of regions, which may suffer from a gas shortage in the event of the shutdown of these facilities.The study shows that when 28 such facilities (out of the 193 identified) cease to operate (one at a time), significant gas shortages can simultaneously occur in several regions. Results suggest that the presented method can be used in planning invariant measures to reduce the vulnerability of fuel supply systems in the regions consuming gas.