5.2 billion cubic feet of gas moved through the state’s pipes on a mild October Saturday. None of it was produced here. It all arrived on eight interstate pipelines: Algonquin, Iroquois, Millennium, Tennessee, Transco, Eastern Gas, National Fuel and Empire. Most of it kept going. 2.5 Bcf, or 48%, passed through to Connecticut and New England on Algonquin and Iroquois, and to Canada at Niagara on Tennessee, National Fuel and Empire. Another 2.1 Bcf went to the utilities. About 1.7 of that heated homes and businesses. The rest ran power plants behind the utility gates, nearly all of them in the city and on Long Island. Gas plants made 44% of New York’s electricity that day. They needed about 18% of the gas that moved through the state to do it. The biggest draws at their own pipeline taps were Independence in Oswego, Athens, Cricket Valley, Empire Generating in Schodack and Northport. CPV Valley in Orange County, one of the three largest gas generators in the state last year, did not nominate gas at all. Nobody stores natural gas at a power plant. A gas plant burns what the pipe delivers that hour. What the plants keep on site is oil, for the cold days when the gates at Mahwah and Brookfield are already full. This was a mild Saturday in October. The same map in January will look very different.