The first natural gas injections have been made into the Ryckman Creek Gas Storage Facility in Uinta County, WY, with Northwest Pipeline and Overthrust Pipeline supplying the first gas, Ryckman Creek Resources LLC said Wednesday.

Construction of the 35 Bcf high-deliverability, multi-cycle storage facility began in late September, according to the Peregrine Midstream Partners LLC subsidiary (see Daily GPI, Nov. 4, 2010). In addition to Northwest and Overthrust, the Ryckman Creek facility is to interconnect in phases over the the coming months to Questar, Ruby Pipeline and Kern River. Reservoir commissioning and pad gas injections are planned for this summer, with commercial operations and first customer gas injections slated to begin Sept. 1.

“Even though we got a late start on construction last fall due to issues beyond our control, we have been able to keep the overall project on schedule, pulling some work originally scheduled for completion in 2013 into this year,” said Peregrine Executive Vice President Darrell Poteet, who is in charge of Pipelines & Surface Facilities Development & Management.

“We battled the Wyoming winter at 7,800 feet on the top of a mountain to achieve an in-service date that will allow our customers to start injecting gas this fall and withdraw gas this coming winter. We didn’t want our customers to have to wait until next year for the facility to come online. This would have been a significant accomplishment in any weather, but especially so in freezing cold mountain-top conditions.”

Initial working gas capacity for the first phase is 18 Bcf for the 2012-2013 gas storage season, which would increase to 25 Bcf by spring 2013 and 35 Bcf by spring 2014. A planned second expansion would increase total working gas capacity to 50 Bcf or more, depending on market demand. Maximum phase one injection capability is to be 350 MMcf/d with a maximum withdrawal capability of 480 MMcf/d.

The storage facility has six injection/withdrawal wells; two re-entry observation wells and two re-entry/recompletion saltwater disposal wells. It also has a central gas/liquids separation and processing facility, almost five miles of new eight-inch diameter storage field flow lines; nearly four miles of 16-inch diameter header pipeline; one unidirectional and four bi-directional pipeline interconnects and meter stations; and 30,000 hp of electric-drive compression.

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