Northern Natural Gas said Friday afternoon it had contracted a repair crew and dive boat that were en route to a leak site (see Daily GPI, March 2) on the Northern-operated Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System offshore Texas. Pending any weather delays, Northern expected the dive boat to arrive at the site late Saturday evening and repairs to begin Sunday. It anticipates restoration of service to some of the affected platforms downstream of Matagorda 758 by the start of Tuesday’s gas day.

Rio Vista Station’s #1 turbine has become unavailable due to needing an engine replacement, El Paso said, adding that its preliminary estimate is that a replacement can be made in about two weeks. The remaining available compressors at Rio Vista place unique limitations on station capacity. Unit 2 can compress up to 27 MMcf/d by itself, El Paso said, while Unit 3 is a larger machine and needs a minimum of 75 MMcf/d to run. It can compress up to 100 MMcf/d. Together the two units can move 125 MMcf/d, the pipeline said. That means Rio Vista volumes in the range of 28-74 MMcf/d cannot be accommodated. El Paso posted a Rio Vista capacity of 125 MMcf/d for Friday and Saturday, but said that if nominated volumes consistently fall between 28 and 74 MMcf/d during this extended outage, it may be forced to lower the capacity to the 27 MMcf/d level. The potential restriction affects the IEXCPT37 and IGCNMX37 interconnects.

Citing current and projected storage inventory and the current weather outlook, ANR said Friday it will be limiting storage account activity under Rate Schedules DDS and MBS until further notice. The pipeline is notifying all DDS and MBS customers that they cannot exceed their account balance as of March 2. However, nominations and infield transfers to and from DDS and MBS accounts will continue to be allowed provided that customers do not exceed the balance they held on March 2. ANR said it will continue to monitor operations and weather projections and will update this restriction as necessary.

Southern Natural Gas expects the Logansport Compressor Station to be out of service for two to three days starting Wednesday as it performs pipeline modifications at the station and at the Spider Field tap in North Louisiana. Southern also said maintenance currently scheduled to start March 15 will reduce capacity west of the Bienville (LA) Compressor Station from about 127,625 Dth/d to about 117,625 Dth/d for three to five days.

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