Sorry for the depressing title. "Natural gas fuels about 11 percent of all electric power production in America" (Testimony of Steven L. Horton Vice President, Pipeline Engineering and Environmental Duke Energy Corporation to Congress Aug 4, 1999). I noted Senator Bennet's concern over the natural gas utilities and wanted to compare the results of the two most recent surveys done by the Oil and Gas Working Group of the President's Council on Year 2000 conversion. I think I understand Sen. Bennet's "concern". The charts are poorly annotated and at first there where portions where I could find no correlation between the two sets of numbers. If anyone can fully make sense of these charts from the data on them, I don't know, I'll say thank you. After some review though, I believe the following is accurate.

First the easy stuff. The sample group has changed (Feb N=17, June n= 19, remember these sample sizes) and is now more heavily weighted towards large utilities. No note if these are entirely different companies or some the same, some different, it is a small sample. Second, under Readiness a new column "Ready" (isn't that smart) has been added.

Okay skipping ahead, under planned completion dates, In February 55% planned to be completed with business systems by the second quarter, In June, 42% stated they were complete. Embedded systems in February 69% thought to finish by Q2. In June 57% said they were finished. What's wrong with this picture, and so it continues with only contigency plans running slight ahead of the Feb. schedule. Now let's look to Q3, In Feb, 94% planned to be finished with business and embedded systems by Q3, In June, despite having further to go and overestimating their progress through Q2, 99% plan to be finished. Incidently, how the hell do you get 99% with an n of 19, 18/19 = 94.7%. Again poor annotation, I can only guess 1) the sample size is larger then declared in the company size breakdown, with some companies not declaring their annual revenue or 2) more likely, though still a guess without the questionaire, completion date is not a binary yes/no, but a continuous variable (i.e. we expect to be 91.31% complete in Q3 and we are currently 63.15% complete)

Now the interesting stuff. Under readiness status. In Feb 3% had yet to inventory their supply chain. In June, 3% had yet to inventory their supply chain (1/19 = 5.2% ?? but if inventory is a continous variable more than one company may have yet to finish an inventory) In Feb, 87% of business Systems were remediated, In June 48%, a collosal leap backward. Embedded systems 67% -> 57%, with how poorly the information is presented I won't speculate as to its meaning except to say it's going in the wrong direction. And the finale, In June under readiness, 12% done with business and embedded systems 0% with supply chain. Now you say I got it all backward that it means 12% left to finish, 0% left to finish in that case how is inventory under supply chain 3% left to finish, assesment 38% left to finish, validation 74% left to finish and all companies haver achieved supply chain readiness. It is clear, 1) schedules are slipping, 2) as of June no reporting utility was ready and on average business and embedded systems were 12% of the way to readiness.

http://www.ingaa.org/NEW/YEAR2000/Results.pdf http://www.ingaa.org/INFO/1999Press/080499a.pdf They are PDF files

I know there are some natural gas insiders on board (Murray, John), what's your take, a month of screwed up bills, 18 inch pilot lights in downtown Manhatten, none of the above?

-- Anonymous, August 07, 1999

Answers

Let me try this again without all the verbiage. If you look at the most recent self-reported assesment of natural gas utilities, on average no system is more than 1/8 finished. This was reported in May-June 1999. If you compare these results to the last assesment schedules are slipping and key areas such as percent remediated are moving backwards. I would really like someone to chime in and explain that this doesn't spell Screwed with a capital S.

http://www.ingaa.org/NEW/YEAR2000/Results.pdf

http://www.ingaa.org/INFO/1999Press/080499a.pdf

-- Anonymous, August 08, 1999

Don't worry Paul, all those gas fired power plants are now y2k "ready", according to the experts anyway.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999