With extreme cold rolling through the province, SaskEnergy says three natural gas usage records were set this week.

During a 24-hour period starting at 9 a.m., 1.53 PetaJoules (PJ) of natural gas was used from Monday to Tuesday.

Then from Tuesday to Wednesday, 1.54 PJ was used and 1.56 PJ was used from Wednesday morning to Thursday.

The previous record was set in December of 2018 and February of 2019 with 1.5 PJ.

“We have a really robust safety and integrity program as well as planning programs so we work throughout the year to inspect, maintain and upgrade our system as it needs so it can operate safely and efficiently regardless of what the weather conditions are,” said SaskEnergy supervisor of government and media relations Casey MacLeod.

SaskEnergy says the average home consumes about 100 GigaJoules of natural gas each year.

Other factors into the record numbers include customer growth and the increasing usage of natural gas for power production.

“We design our system of accommodate this growth and then obviously around the extreme colds that we get around Saskatchewan,” MacLeod said.

“So on the supply side, we ensure we have enough gas and the extra capacity so we can provide the amount of gas that is needed in the cold temperatures like this.”

SaskEnergy says their systems are monitored 24 hours a day to help manage peak times, especially during the winter.