The Southern California Gas Company (trading as SoCalGas) is a utility company based in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, and a subsidiary of

Sempra Energy Sempra is a North American energy infrastructure company based in San Diego, California. The company is one of the largest utility holding companies in the United States with roughly 40 million consumers. Sempra's focus is on electric and natura ...

. It is the primary provider of

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

to Los Angeles and

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

Overview

Its headquarters are located in the

Gas Company Tower Gas Company Tower is a 52-story, class-A office skyscraper on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, California. Located on the north side of Fifth Street between Olive Street and Grand Avenue, across from the Biltmore Hotel, the building ser ...

in downtown Los Angeles. SoCalGas provides natural gas service for approximately 21.6 million customers, spanning roughly 20,000 square miles of California, extending from

Visalia Visalia ( ) is a city in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley of California. The population was 141,384 as per the 2020 census. Visalia is the fifth-largest city in the San Joaquin Valley, the 42nd most populous in California, and 192nd in ...

in the north to the Mexican border in the south. Gas service for

San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the f ...

is provided by sister utility

San Diego Gas & Electric San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) provides natural gas and electricity to San Diego County and southern Orange County in southwestern California, United States. It is owned by Sempra, a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Di ...

, and

Southwest Gas Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. () is an investor-owned utility based in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. The company provides natural gas service to over 2 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers in parts of Arizona, Nevada, and ...

and the Long Beach Gas & Oil Department (LBGO) carve out small portions of the Southern California area for natural gas delivery. The company provides gas service for all or part of the following

counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

: *

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

* Imperial *

Kern KERN (1180 AM broadcasting, AM) is a commercial radio, commercial radio station city of license, licensed to Wasco, California, Wasco-Greenacres, California, and serving the Bakersfield metropolitan area. The station is owned by American General ...

* Kings *

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

* Riverside *

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for " St. Louis the Bishop", ; Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly hal ...

* Santa Barbara * Tulare * Ventura

History

This gas company's roots trace back to the 1800s when new settlers arrived in

in search of a new frontier. In 1867, Los Angeles Gas Company, the forerunner of today's Southern California Gas Company, installed 43 new gas lamps along Main Street, making the city safer at night. The gas lighting business was run by five entrepreneurs who manufactured the gas from

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

, a

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bi ...

-like substance, and later from

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

. The company was enjoying modest success until

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

introduced his electric light in 1879. With the future of the gas lamp business uncertain, the company began looking for other uses for gas, and Los Angeles soon had its first gas stove and heater. Meanwhile, Pacific Enterprises was looking to expand its gas business. Founded in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in 1886 as Pacific Lighting, the company bought several small gas manufacturing and distribution companies in the area, including the Los Angeles Gas Company in 1890. These companies ultimately became Southern California Gas Company. By the early 20th century,

—a colorless, odorless gas found in association with oil underground—was starting to gain attention. The breakthrough came with the discovery of the

Buena Vista Oil Field The Buena Vista Oil Field, formerly the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2 (NPR-2) is a large oil field in Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States. Discovered in 1909, and having a cumulative production of approximately , it is ...

near

Taft, California Taft (formerly Moron, Moro, and Siding Number Two) is a city in the foothills at the extreme southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, in Kern County, California. Taft is located west-southwest of Bakersfield, at an elevation of . The popul ...

in 1909, which included a huge reservoir of natural gas. Since natural gas had twice the heating value of manufactured gas, the company took the bold step to convert its system to natural gas and build pipelines throughout the state. Natural gas was soon found throughout the country, and demand for the fuel was rapidly growing. To meet customer demand, the company began storing gas in large holding tanks. In 1941, the company introduced a new system to the

Southwest United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorad ...

: underground storage of natural gas. By 2016, the company had four separate underground storage facilities, all of them depleted oil and gas fields repurposed as gas storage. The four are, in order from largest to smallest, the Aliso Canyon field, north of

Porter Ranch Porter Ranch is a suburban neighborhood in the northwest San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. History New home construction that was completed in the Porter Ranch area in the 1990s–2000s, including the Renaiss ...

; Honor Rancho, near Newhall; the La Goleta Gas Field adjacent to Goleta; and the Playa del Rey storage facility, north of

Playa del Rey Playa del Rey (Spanish for "Beach of the King") is a seaside community in the Santa Monica Bay and the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It has a ZIP code of 90293 and area codes of 310 and 424. As of 2018, the community had a populat ...

, near the Los Angeles International Airport. As Southern California's population grew, so too, did the company, eventually becoming the nation's largest natural gas distribution utility, serving 19.5 million people through 5.5 million gas meters in more than 530 communities. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Southern California Gas Company is a subsidiary of

, a Fortune 500 company based in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

. Its service area encompasses 23,000 sq mi (60,000 km²) of diverse terrain throughout most of Central and Southern California, from just south of Sanger to the Mexican border. In late 2012, the company began the Advanced Meter Installation (AMI) Project that consists of upgrading over 6 million gas meters with the new Advanced Meter communication device. This device is attached to an analog gas meter that automatically and securely transfers gas usage information to the company's customer service and billing centers. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved a budget of $1.05 billion for this project, which is expected to be completed in 2017. On March 6, 2019, SoCalGas announced a plan to replace 20 percent of its traditional natural gas supply with

renewable natural gas Renewable natural gas (RNG), also known as sustainable natural gas (SNG) or biomethane, is a biogas which has been upgraded to a quality similar to fossil natural gas and having a methane concentration of 90% or greater. By increasing the concentr ...

(RNG) by 2030. SoCalGas' aims to be the cleanest natural gas utility in North America, which it plans to achieve by delivering increasingly renewable energy to its customers. As part of this effort, SoCalGas has partnered with startup Twelve to convert CO₂ from raw

biogas Biogas is a mixture of gases, primarily consisting of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste and food waste. It is a ...

into

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ea ...

Environmental impact

A gas leak from the underground Aliso Canyon gas storage started in October 2015 releasing

uncontrollably. By December 2015, thousands of people from Porter Ranch had been temporarily relocated and the leak had added more than 150 million pounds of methane to the atmosphere. The NGO

Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as Environmental Defense) is a United States-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. The group is known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and hu ...

has called the incident "unprecedented for California" and compared the leak's continuous output of

greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and ...

to that of 7 million cars or "8 or 9 coal-fired plants". The 20-year climate impact of this leak is estimated to be the same as burning a billion gallons of gasoline. The incident has been called "the biggest environmental disaster since the

Deepwater Horizon oil spill The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill") was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010 off of the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considere ...

" by journalists. The company has advocated for mixing

into existing natural gas pipelines. However, California state officials have taken the position that biogas is "better used in hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy-- like aviation, heavy industry and long-haul trucking."

References

External links

SoCalGas.com: official Southern California Gas Company website

SoCalGas.com: official Aliso Canyon gas leak website

Sempra Energy website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Southern California Gas Company Energy in California Sempra Energy Electric power companies of the United States Natural gas companies of the United States Companies based in Los Angeles Southern California Non-renewable resource companies established in 1867 1867 establishments in California Energy companies established in 1867