 Okay, good morning and welcome is my pleasure to introduce the director from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Mark Gilarducci. All right, good morning everyone and thanks for being here today. Today we're going to kind of give you a briefing and an update on where we are at on the Aliso Canyon Gas League and all the actions that have taken place and how the agencies have come together to be able to mitigate the situation. First of all, let me do a couple of things and I want to point out and thank there's some VIPs that are in the room. I want to address Councilman Englender from the city of Los Angeles and covers Porter Ranch and then Jared Dagonia, who is the staff for Supervisor Antonovich, okay, great. And I think we're going to have some other elected officials that were here on their way so we'll recognize them when they come in. I also want to really speak to the unity of effort that took place on this particular incident and the extensive collaboration and coordination. Our role at OES was to take a lot of great organizations that were all working in parallel action and bring them together in a coordinated unified effort and build that moving forward so that we had clear objectives and timelines put in place to ultimately get to where we're at today. And so I want to thank all of the different agencies, the subject matter experts, the departments, the political leaders for all of the support and the ability to convey the message appropriately to the public. This was a complicated event and we are still working through a lot of things that will be the long-term, but we did all come together and everybody did a really great job in being able to mitigate that. So with that, let's just get into the briefing. I want to first introduce the Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Conservation, Jason Marshall, and he's going to talk a little bit about where things are at with regards to the actual leak itself. Jason. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Good morning. Late yesterday, our senior petroleum engineers finished a careful review of the results of the testing of the cement plug in Southern California gas's standard Cesnon-25 well, aka the well that's been leaking. We have good news. The Division of Oil and Gas has confirmed that the leak in the Liso Canyon storage field is permanently sealed. The multi-step process to confirm the leak is permanently sealed was developed in consultation with experts at the National Labs, independent experts from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs. Five tests were used to confirm the integrity of that cement seal. Those tests and the results of those tests can be found at the Department of Conservation's website, www.conservation.ca.gov. In addition, the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District have confirmed that gas emissions are controlled and air quality has returned to typical levels. As someone who grew up not too far from here, I understand the tremendous concern for the safety of the families and the community here who have been in fact impacted by this emergency. Throughout this incident, public and environmental safety have been our top priority. We have had staff dedicated, on-site, every day during operations since October to ensure that Southern California gas acted quickly and safely to halt the flow of gas. We monitored actions at the wellhead and at the relief wells. We monitored actions at the wellhead and the relief wells, thoroughly assessed the technical basis of all of the actions that were proposed and monitored the progress to shut the well. We issued emergency orders for Southern California gas to turn over all testing results and records related to the closure of this leak. And we convened a panel of technical experts, including those national labs that I mentioned, to provide real-time counsel for us and review of any of the technical details related to the confirming of that permanent seal. Following the Governor's proclamation of an emergency arising from the uncontrolled gas flow here at Aliso Canyon, we immediately issued emergency regulations for all gas storage facilities in the state. And we're now working to make those temporary emergency regulations permanent. The new requirements of these regulations, including the ones that are in effect now, will require daily testing, increased inspections of mechanical integrity of the wells in these fields, and comprehensive emergency management planning. As with all regulations that the state develops, the public, including the communities here in and around Porter Ranch and San Fernando Valley and across the state, will have a say in the final result. Now that the leak is sealed at Aliso Canyon, our work is going to continue to ensure safe operation of all of the gas storage facilities in California. Southern California gas, they must now do a full inspection and testing of all of the wells in Aliso before injection resumes, consistent with the Governor's order of January 6th. We will carefully review and verify the testing results, and those inspections are going to have to meet new, higher standards. We will make the testing results available on our website for the public, and our criteria and standards for those inspections and tests are already available on that website they were posted yesterday. And we will investigate what happened. The division and the California Public Utilities Commission have already started to investigate the cause of the leak. What we learn from the findings of those investigations is going to guide us in the development and refinement of the emergency regulations into permanent regulations with the goal of protecting public health and safety at all gas storage facilities in California. We are committed to implementing the changes necessary to prevent similar occurrences like the one here in Aliso in the future. Let me just say for housekeeping, what we'll do is we'll have all the briefings, please hold your questions, and then we'll do a facilitated question and answer at the end of the briefing session. Hello, my name is Darrell Osby, Fire Chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. First, I would like to thank our unified partners and cooperators and assisting agencies for their leadership and their teamwork and dedication in relation to this gas leak. As you understand and recognize, the primary mission of the Los Angeles County Fire Department is life, property, and environment. And definitely the fact that this gas leak has been sealed, it's definitely good news this morning. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has been involved in this incident since our health hazmat team received notification from the Office of Emergency Services on October 26, 2015. And following their initial investigation, our health hazmat division immediately began making notifications to the appropriate agencies here in this region. On January 22, 2016, as the situation continued to evolve, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and Southern California Gas Company entered into a unified command structure to maximize a collaborative, coordinated, and communication in relation to this incident. And I believe that the efforts between the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the Public Health Department and Southern California Gas Department in that relationship was outstanding. As you know, the Los Angeles County Fire Department has a long history of managing emergency incidents. And our personnel brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to this incident to help mitigate the incident. Department personnel also participated in numerous meetings and conference calls with the surrounding communities, cooperating with assisting agencies and other interested parties. Our health hazmat staff worked with our partners on sampling error samples, the analysis of results, and the preparation of summer reports. Our health hazmat personnel also worked to ensure hazardous waste generated from this incident was managed properly. Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel evaluated all fire-related and safety concerns during this incident and brought additional fire resources as needed to supplement on-site fire services during red flag weather and other critical operations. Now that the responsible state agency dogger has confirmed the will has been permanently sealed, the Los Angeles County Fire Department will evaluate our continued involvement with this process. Good morning. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Gunson-Houser. I'm the Interim Health Office for Los Angeles County. I'm with the Department of Public Health. First of all, I'd like to thank a number of folks who've been really helpful to us in being actively involved in the event. You've heard about the Unified Command. I've been one of the three incident commanders up here for most days in the last four weeks. I really want to thank Mr. Jimmy Cho, who's really accommodated us and provided us access to information that we've needed, and also Chief Inspania, who's really provided the leadership and structure for the Unified Command to work very effectively. I'd like to say that our role in public health is very independent and very important in the context of this incident. So I speak on behalf of the department and as an independent voice as the health officer for the county. Our role in public health is to assess health threats and to do all that's needed to protect and improve health here in the county. So since we were first notified of the leak back last fall, we've addressed a number of community concerns. We directed that relocation services be made available for members in affected communities. We also addressed the needs to move some of the students to additional schools. And we also developed what we call the Expanded Air Monitoring Plan to assure that all chemicals of concern and types of tests that were needed to be done were actually performed and provides the best available scientific information to inform us and the community about possible health effects. So as I think about health, there really are three important questions that members of the community may have. One is, is it safe now? Another is, will it be safe tomorrow? And the third question is, after I move back, has anything happened in the last few months that might be a concern for my health going forward? So I want to address these in turn. First of all, it's very understandable that residents who have lived in the community have concerns about their health. They've been dislocated. Many of them have experienced short-term symptoms and there's been a lot of information out there about testing on various chemicals and so on and so forth. Our position on coming back to your home is the same as it has been and that is that symptoms are attributable to the gas, particularly the odorants that are included in there. So if residents come back home and they don't smell any odors and don't have any symptoms, then it's safe for them to return to their homes. I realize this can take some time for certain people. They may have individual health situations, access or functional needs issues. There might be other requirements so it may take a period of time for all residents to do that. But when those issues are addressed, it is safe for them to return home now. Regarding the question of whether it will be safe in the future, you've already heard some comments about those and I'll be followed by other speakers. But based on my view and seeing what's going on, I have a high level of confidence that measures will be put in place to assure the safety of this community going forward. Finally, in regard to the question about are there any future health effects that people might have concerns about. As you know, our department has played a critical role of gathering together, consolidating, analyzing and interpreting all the health data that's been collected. There have been many agencies including the Air Resources Board, the Air Quality Management District, LA Unified School District and Southern California Gas, all of whom have done testing on a variety of constituents in the environment. We've pulled those all together. Collectively there's been thousands of tests and lots of results. As we've reviewed those, my conclusion is that all of the levels that we've looked at are below health levels of concern and so we do not anticipate that will be any long-term health effects in the community resulting from this. Going forward, there will be a number of things that our department will do. We realize that it's very important to the community that we continue to monitor the environment and report on that. So we've requested that monitoring continue for at least several weeks, 30 days, at least so that there can be an assurance that the current safe conditions continue into the near future. In addition, we're going to be doing monitoring of health in the community. We're also going to be doing some odor surveys in the community to make sure that any odors that are discovered or reported are assessed and addressed appropriately. Finally, I'd like to comment that Supervisor Antonovich has been very much in touch with the community and has heard from many about their concerns and uncertainty about returning to their homes and has specifically requested that we do some additional testing to affirm that the air quality that we're seeing in the external environment is the same as in the homes and we think this is an important step to assure the community that their homes are fine to move back into. So we've begun talking about that and within another day or two, we'll be announcing exactly what the testing is that we'll be doing in that regard. So that summarizes my comments and I just want to affirm that public health is going to stay actively involved with the incident until it's completion and we'll continue to do all we can to assess, improve and protect health here in this community. Thank you. Just a little interruption. I just wanted to recognize Congressman Sherman has arrived and is here with us this morning. Thanks Congressman. Good morning, my name is Melanie Marty. I'm the deputy director for the science division at the office of environmental health hazard assessment. We're a part of CalEPA. We consist of health scientists and physicians and our job is to evaluate public health impacts of chemicals in our environment. We work to support our sister agencies at the state level and the local level to determine whether or not there are public health impacts of whatever chemicals of concern. So we have been looking all along at the data that are collected by South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Air Resources Board, SoCal Gas on the chemicals that are associated with the Natural Gas League. We focused in on air toxics and I have to say that the levels that were measured were largely below our reference exposure levels. The reference levels can be viewed as safety benchmarks and they're designed to protect the general public including sensitive individuals such as children. So that's good news. The current measurements of benzene are well below our reference exposure levels so we do not think that there is a public health concern from the air toxics. I'd like to second what LA County Health folks have been saying that the symptoms that were experienced especially earlier on are very consistent with exposure to them or captain odorants and these are very unpleasant symptoms and I recognize that people were really impacted by that. I think we can say now that with the plan that South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Air Resources Board have in place to determine whether air quality is okay in this area for people to live here and be safe is a good plan. It is public health protective. I did wanna add that we convened an expert advisory panel. This consisted of eight professors in the UC system, various UC campuses with expertise in toxicology, human health effects, medicine, epidemiology and exposure. And they have looked at the data that were made available to them and agreed that the symptoms that were reported to LA County Health were likely due to the more captain exposure. They also agreed that the air toxics exposure levels were too low to be of concern. Going forward, we will continue to look at the air quality data that is being collected by the different agencies to ensure that the public is protected and that the gas leak is gone. Good morning. I'm Bart Kruse, Chief of Research at the California Air Resources Board and we have responsibility for the state's air pollution and climate change programs. Measurements taken by our staff and our partners, including air flights, onsite observations and community monitors in Porter Ranch and surrounding communities after the leaking well was controlled confirm that the leaking gas has diminished consistent with successfully controlling the leak. We developed numerical criteria with the South Coast Air Quality Managing District to determine when emissions are controlled and air quality has returned back to typical levels. We have seen a diminishing trend in the measurements since the well was controlled and the criteria have now been met for the last three consecutive days. We're still waiting a few laboratory analyses but we're relying mostly on daily onsite observations that we and the South Coast do as well as our eight community monitors which is our most robust indicators. We, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Scientific Aviation will continue to monitor the facility and community air quality for this foreseeable future, compare our measurements to the criteria and report results on a daily basis. The monitoring includes continuous methane, and hydrogen sulfide measurements that will continue to be available on our websites in real time. In December, the Southern California Gas Company told Governor Brown they are prepared to pay for mitigation of the climate impacts from the leak and the governor directed us to produce a climate impacts mitigation program by the end of March. This program is now in development and we are consulting with other agencies and seeking public input. Going forward, we are coordinating with DOGGR on air monitoring requirements at all natural gas facilities, storage facilities in California. In addition, our oil and gas regulation currently in development includes leak detection and repair requirements. As part of that regulation, we're also proposing a greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan to make up for emissions from large leak events such as the Southern California Gas Company has committed to do for Aliso Canyon. Together, these would provide for early detection and ensure that any climate impacts are addressed. Thank you. Good morning, I'm Michael Picker from the California Public Utilities Commission and I'd like to personally thank all the many field staff from the many agencies who participated in this both local and state and for their constant reporting to us on events and activities that were taking place in the field. I'm gonna cover a couple of issues. First is, we're ramping up an independent and very comprehensive investigation at the site. We know that the public of the entire state of California and all of the LA region and Porter Ranch are depending on that. We know that elected officials, decision makers and other enforcement agencies will use that investigation to help them frame actions that they're gonna take as a result of the leak. It will cover, at least from our perspective, whether there was adequate public notification and then general operations at the gas field. Now that the well is closed and the leak is sealed, we've actually taken control of the site in order to preserve evidence. We've ordered the Utilities Southern California Gas to take steps to preserve evidence. We'll be looking at both things that we can find at the site, but we'll also be looking at actions that the utility was taking before and after through our audits of their files. One of the things that we're doing is bringing in an independent technical consultant, blade energy partners to perform a study that's called root cause analysis. That study will become part of our evidentiary file and we'll share it with the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. It will be available to the Republic. Again, this is a long process for us normally. I don't wanna speculate on how long it takes, but at the end of it, there'll be a report from the commissioners that will frame our further steps on the investigation. I also wanna say that we've been tracking the costs of managing the site, of fixing the leak and other issues that are associated with the gas leak and we have been tracking them since the very beginning. We have a fairly complex and reasonable database to keep track of that. It makes sense based on what we know now. We'll continue to order that going forward, but at this point, the utility cannot change their rates without coming back to us for a full vote of all five commissioners in public. So, I know that there are some folks who have seen higher bills. I think that our tracking shows that that is likely caused by the very cold winter that we've had and so we'll continue to monitor that, but I think that we're pretty clear that that's the current situation. So, thank you. Good morning, I'm Bob Weisner. I'm Chair of the California Energy Commission. The California Energy Commission is responsible, among other things, for planning and helping the state deal with contingencies. The governor's executive order directed us to work with the California Public Utilities Commission and also the California Independent System Operator and our responsibility is to maintain reliability of service in this area. Obviously, gas both heats your houses in the winter and it also fuels the power plants which provides power, both lighting your home in the winter and also cooling your home in the summer. And so, what we've done is organize a team at this point to start analyzing the situation and that team includes experts on the gas system, on the power system, both in terms of how they operate and how to model those and also experts on some of our options going forward. As we're developing, we have done enough analysis to be concerned about reliability of service, particularly in Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. So, we are at this point organizing teams for a couple of activities. One of those is we are coming up with an action plan and that action plan will include energy efficiency, we're certainly going to ask the citizens of Los Angeles to help us mitigate the consequences by using their energy wisely, both this summer and next winter and we're also looking at what are called grid management or operations. It's gonna be very important for us to coordinate between the gas company and the power companies, particularly the California Independent System Operator who operates part of the grid here, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and also Edison and some of the smaller public utilities and what we need to do is coordinate the operation so that we're using the gas most effectively to maintain power this summer. So again, we will have a workshop down here in early April to talk through our action plan and also to get input from the citizens on ideas on how we can enhance the action plan. But again, we're gonna need everyone to work together, both among the companies and the citizens, I think to get through the period of time without a lease or a canyon. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jeff Reeve, I'm with the CEO Office of Emergency Management for the County of Los Angeles and I'm here to address a very, very important component now that the well has been sealed which effectively means the response phase is coming to a conclusion and now we're moving into recovery, the recovery phase of the incident. The Gas League and Eliso Canyon has affected many lives. Now it's time to help as many residents, businesses and stakeholders confidently reenter their community and resume their day-to-day activities. One of the ways that we'll do that is the establishment of a local assistance center. This is a one-stop shop for residents and business owners to come and connect with any local, county, state or federal agency to expedite whatever need they may have and that center will be opening up at the Los Angeles City Mason Recreation Center beginning tomorrow morning. It's important to recognize too that businesses have been affected by this event and the Office of Emergency Management has coordinated with the state to bring disaster recovery assistance to small business owners in the surrounding community that have been economically impacted by the Eliso Canyon Gas League. And I wanna take a moment to thank Director Garaducci for his support to get a SBA declaration for this incident. Small business administration loans are now available to small business owners who have experienced financial losses and hardships. Up to two million worth of low-interest federal loans are now being offered by the SBA. These loans will help businesses meet financial obligations and operating expenses which could have been met if the disaster had not occurred. We encourage small business owners to visit the Business Recovery Center located at 9207 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 200 in Chatsworth. The center is open Monday through Friday, 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. and you can also access more information by calling 1-800-659-2955 or visiting the SBA.gov forward slash disaster. Thank you. Good morning, I'm Dennis Areola, the president and CEO of SoCal Gas. And this is obviously an important day that we've all been waiting for. And I think it's an turning point for all of us and for the community. And to the residents of Porter Ranch and the surrounding communities, I wanna tell you that I recognize the disruption that this gas leak has caused to your lives, the discomfort of those who have experienced symptoms related to the odorant in the gas, the challenges experienced by families that have had to move or switch schools with their kids and the greenhouse gas emissions from the leak. And I know that there's nothing that I can say that will change the past, but I do know that there are measures that measurable actions actually speak louder than words. And so on behalf of SoCal Gas, we're committing to the following five actions to Porter Ranch and all of our customers. First, we're gonna help residents who chose to relocate to return to their normal lives as smoothly as possible. And this includes expeditious review and processing of expenses, continued mileage reimbursements to families who enrolled their children in schools outside the Porter Ranch area through the end of the school year. And continued company reimbursed accommodations for specific special circumstances. This also includes continuing to work with LAUSD and to reimburse it for the reasonable cost that it incurred as a result of the relocation of the schools. Second, we will provide dedicated customer service to the impacted residents of the communities surrounding Aliso Canyon through our community liaison program and our community resource center. Third, we're gonna continue to cooperate with the regulatory agencies on their investigation into the cause of the leak and we will share publicly available data with the community. Fourth, we're gonna accelerate the inspection of the other storage wells at Aliso in compliance with the newly issued regulations that were just mentioned earlier. And in addition, we will support forward-looking regulatory policies that adopt the best safety practices for all natural gas storage facilities. And lastly, as was mentioned earlier, we will develop and we will implement a plan to mitigate the leak screen house gas emissions at our expense, not at the expense of our customers. And we'll keep you updated on how we deliver on all these commitments. Now, I also want to acknowledge the professionalism and the collaboration of all the local, county, state agencies up here today. This truly was a team effort in a very difficult situation. As well as I wanna recognize several of the federal agencies that have been involved. But I especially wanna call out the coordination and focus that was brought from the governor's office. The leadership that all of you provided during this challenging time was much appreciated and I think it was also showed to the public that public and private people can come together and work together during very difficult situations. I also wanna say to the SoCal gas team and to all of our partners and contractors that work tirelessly and safely. To you and your families, you have my gratitude for everything that you have done throughout this and what you've done for our customers. Thank you. I'm Gillian Wright. I'm vice president of customer services for SoCal gas. And first, I'd like to thank the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Office of Emergency Services and the City of Los Angeles for their input and assistance with the temporary relocation plan. As we move into recovery, I wanna recognize that this relocation effort was not a perfect process. And thanks to the feedback of many residents, we continuously work to streamline and improve the experience for them along the way. As you know, the reason for the relocation was to provide relief to those who were experiencing symptoms from the odor and the natural gas. And as you heard, Dr. Gunson-Houser and Mr. Kroes explain, the air quality in the Port Ranch area is at normal levels for all constituents. According to our agreement with the LA city attorney's office, with today's confirmation from Dogger that the leak is stopped and the well is sealed, it's time for residents to be able to return home. To help with this process, we extended that time to do that from 48 hours to seven nights and eight days from today for those in short-term housing. So this morning, we began notifying area residents by phone, text, and email, and with the assistance of all of our media partners here today. Residents who temporary relocated can start returning home any time to join their neighbors who have lived here the whole time and over 1,800 households have done just that. We've put up all new information on our website at alisoupdates.com where residents can learn about the details for their return home. We're also providing this information by a mail and email and at our community resource center in the Port Arant Town Center. We will also continue to deliver air filtration services already committed over the next several weeks. We are committed to continuing to support the community more broadly through a suite of dedicated services. We will continue to process our reimbursement payments as quickly as possible and I wanna let you know that over 4,000 checks are being issued today. Continuing our community resource center storefront is going to go as long as is needed and we'll continue to post updates to alisoupdates.com and finally we're offering community liaisons to assist customers with reimbursement, relocation or air filtration questions or issues. Thank you. Okay, well thank you to all the presenters. What we'll do now is I'll open it up for questions. I'll identify you and then we'll get to the right person for the answer. Sir, could you identify your? As we've said previously, sure I'm Dennis Ariello, the president and CEO of SoCal Gas. As we've said previously in public documents, the companies including our parent company has over a billion dollars in insurance and what we've said is that expenses related to fixing the leak, to doing everything necessary from a relocation standpoint, all of that will be covered by the company, not by ratepayers. So we will be using company resources including insurance to do that. As far as the overall cost, we gave out an estimate just a couple of weeks ago that said that it could be up to $300 million but obviously we're looking at additional expenses that continue to come in and we'll update you updating those numbers. Thank you, organization. Absolutely. So for people who are housed in short-term housing, so that would be hotels or staying with friends and family, we will discontinue paying for relocation as of next Thursday, February 25th. They need to check out Thursday morning. Additional questions? A question for Dogger, please. Here, Jason Marshall with the Department of Conservation Dogger. I'll answer the second part first. The requirements that we are imposing here in Aliso Canyon before injection can resume do apply to Aliso Canyon right now but they are part of the discussion that we are having about what the permanent regulations should look like for gas storage facilities going forward. With regard to your specifics about whether gas liners or excuse me, cement liners or metal liners need to be installed into any of the wells before they are returned to service, that really will depend upon the testing. If it indicates that the casing is presently not adequate, then yes, that might be one option that the operator needs to use to ensure that the well is safe to return to service. Again, with regard to whether a liner will need to be installed, it will depend entirely upon whether those casings cemented or otherwise are capable of passing the integrity tests. If they can't, then they will need to be backed up by additional inner liner that is then cemented to the existing casing. As for existing valves or new valves, if they are installed, they need to be tested before. They are installed, and if they were pre-existing and they are just going to be replaced, they need to be tested also before the injection begins. That is something that we are looking at with regard to the permanent regulations. It depends upon the timing that it takes for SoCal gas to get through their process, but yes, that's conceivable. Again, Jason Marshall, Dogger, Department of Conservation. The short answer there is that there are now, as a result of the emergency regulations, daily testing of all of the wellheads in Aliso Canyon, as well as other facilities in the state to identify whether there are leaks that will allow us to be right on top of it with our partners as well with the airport and any regional air districts to get on top of any leaks that do occur if any occur. And that is a part of the, again, part of the emergency regulations that have been in effect since February, the beginning of February. Dennis Ariello, the president and CEO of SoCal gas. We're just in the beginning stages, obviously all of our efforts were focused on stopping the leak and sealing the well. So we are just beginning to look at what type of program we can put together a mitigation program to mitigate the emissions that were released. Several examples are possible. Obviously, there are properties throughout California, dairies that release natural methane. Those are projects out there where we can capture that from entering into the atmosphere. There are different things working with water treatment facilities where methanes and other CO2 equivalents come out. So we're gonna be looking at a lot of different things. There's a lot of good ideas out there that we're gonna be open-minded to. But until we actually get a physical measurement also, we won't know what the overall impact was. You asked about what the dollar impact is. We don't know yet. Until we know what the physical measurement is of the emissions and the types of projects or programs that we would put in place, I'd only be speculating. So we'll hold off on that at this point. You indicated that the... Actually, just to follow up on the prior question. So I'm Bart Kruse with the California Air Resources Board. So we're doing two things in parallel. First, we're doing a more accurate assessment of how much methane escaped into the atmosphere. So we have a preliminary estimate. And that we're working with our partners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech and other institutions that had a more continuous record of methane levels in the LA basin to determine what a more precise number for the total amount leaked. We've also begun developing a program that's required to be finalized by the end of March. So we'll be going through a public process on that. And then the governor's executive order directed us to focus on short-lived climate pollutants, including but not necessarily limited to methane and to keep the projects here in California. So you had a question for her? Yeah, Mr. Picker, if you would, I'm then followed up by a question for Mr. Wasmiller. Okay, you're from? I'm Pete Dematrio with KNX 1070. Hi, I'm Michael Picker. When you talked about the idea of what potential rates or costs could be passed through to rate payers, you said they'd have to go through PUC. But at the same time, you also indicated that you believe that the current increases that we're seeing in gas rates are in line with what you call winter bills, meaning it's colder whether people use more gas. How are you making that kind of a determination when you've got a lot of cases which have come up where people have seen cost increases of anywhere from 200 to 1200% on their gas bills? Now that, unless the temperature around here is down around the level of the planet Jupiter, you don't use that much gas. Is the PUC adopting socal gases position on what they think the rates are or should be? Or are you really going to do an accurate assessment of why these differentiations are happening? No, the rates have been set that they're operating under. We went through a two-year process to examine all the costs of their infrastructure and to begin to understand the different pieces that different customers use and set rates for those. Those, the rates don't change. Those rates don't change. Now, they are actually applying again in the next rate case, which will probably govern the two to three to five years beyond the adoption of that next rate case. But there is no change in the rates. So the question is why do bills change? And so we've done an analysis of some samples because of the number of questions that we have. And the best thing that we can do right at this point is correlate it to changes in the weather. Now, we actually have a memo which should be available on our website, but if it's not available there right now, I'd be happy to email it to you and anybody else here so that you can take a look at that analysis that we've done. All right, and for Mr. Weismiller, if you would, you talked about the idea of establishing a protocol to reach out to people to use less energy based on the fact we may not have a lease of canyon to provide natural gas. Is there any concern from the Energy Commission that in theory we might look at situations where we could have brownouts, electrical power brownouts in Southern California because that gas is not online and available to burn? What we're doing now is assessing the interaction between the power system and the gas system in coming up with options so we, in an action plan so we do not have any sort of interruptions. Are you worried though about possible brownouts? We are concerned about reliability, both next winter in terms of people's house heating and also this summer in terms of power. And so in response to those concerns, we're coming up with an action plan. Jason Marshall with the California Department of Conservation and Dogger. The first part of your question, in terms of how long will it take the gas company to get through the review and you're right, that is a fairly comprehensive set of tests. That's really going to depend a little bit upon how many rigs, how much equipment the gas company can place on the facility to be able to get through that process. It could take as much as 20 days or more for a given operation or a given well to be rigged up and examined. If a well is taken out of operation under those criteria, will they be allowed to replace it? Right now we're concerned primarily about making sure that the existing infrastructure is in place and we'll be looking at any request to drill additional wells on a case by case basis. But definitely in the construct of the governor's order. Until they have gone through our well by well review criteria, that is correct. Well they can finish them, we expect they're going to be finishing them one well at a time, but they cannot bring them on until all of the wells have been gone through those well review criteria. It could be some time. I'm sorry, I forgot your last name from the Daily News. I would note that the order does not require them to shut in all of the wells and that they are allowed, you asked if they could be out of service for months. It's important to remember, this does not prohibit them from producing through those wells. So they can bring gas out of the field through existing wells. They cannot begin injection to replenish the field. I just want to be clear about that. I would defer a question about the field's capacity and withdrawal to the PUC, but they can still withdraw, but it is subject to the PUC order. I'm Michael Picker. Our concern again, as Chair Weissenmuller explained, is that the entire energy system in Southern California was built with the expectation of storage, pretty much at the level and in the location that Aliso Canyon provides. Without that storage, on some days, it's possible that demand would be greater than what we can bring in through the pipelines, and therefore you have to have a place to withdraw it from. It's the larger of the different gas fields in the basin. So we tried to make sure that there was prudent reserves remaining in the site to get us through the rest of this winter and hopefully through the summer. But as I think Commissioner Weissenmuller has pointed out, we still have concerns. The 10-day heat storm, or the three five-day heat storms that persist through July, August, September could put us short in terms of, in relationship to gas, that LEDWP, Southern California Edison, and some of the other utilities in the LA region need to be able to produce electricity for people's needs. So for all those reasons, we came up with what our best estimate of that insurance policy should be and chose to keep 15 billion cubic feet in the gas field. That's the working gas on top of the cushion. I'd actually like to have that conversation offline so we can focus more on the response here to this. But I will tell you in short form, the Division of Oil and Gas has had multiple additional requests approved by the legislature for additional resources, and there are additional resources in the governor's budget now to deal with this matter as well as other issues that doggers faced. I believe what you're referring to is doggers renewal plan, and that renewal plan is actually a statement that we've put out that identifies point by point the things that we need to work on in terms of reviewing regulations and improving them. Improvements in gas storage facilities, you're right to note, that was released several weeks before this happened, and when the governor issued his executive order on January 6th, we accelerated the revisions to gas storage facilities, which was a subset of underground injection control. We accelerated that and put that straight away into emergency regulations effective right at the beginning of February.