The Pacific Northwest, historically a great corridor forshipping western Canadian natural gas to California’s burgeoningmarkets, is getting increasing attention for expansion ordevelopment of natural gas storage to fuel its own growth, whichhas averaged 5% annually in the 1990s. The region’s only twounderground storage facilities are in the midst of expansions, andenergy players within and outside the region are searching for newstorage prospects-under-and above-ground.

“The buzz is combined-cycle gas generation up here, so it wouldmake sense to have some additional gas storage for those loads,”said Steve Becker, a spokesperson for Washington Water Power,Spokane, WA, but noting his company has no active plans fordeveloping new storage on its own.

Undergoing separate expansions in working capacity and/ordeliverability are the region’s two underground facilities,Northwest Natural Gas’s Mist (OR) facility 50 miles northwest ofPortland a few miles south of the Columbia River, and the JacksonPrairie facility about 100 miles south of Seattle, owned jointly byWashington Water Power, Puget Sound Energy and Northwest Pipelne.Mist will rollout the first part of an eight-year, $122 millionexpansion this November, and Jackson Prairie finishes its expansiona year from now, around October, 1999. (See following report)

That doesn’t stop other players from looking for more. “Wedefinitely are interested in storage opportunities (either on ourown or in partnership with a merchant operator),” said LeslieFerron-Jones, spokesperson for Portland-based PG&ampE GasTransmission-Northwest, noting at this point, it has nothing farenough along in development to talk about. “We really believe(storage) is much needed in the Pacific Northwest. We have lookedat a variety of technologies and locations for everything fromunderground storage to liquefied natural gas (LNG).”

With more competitive electric and gas industries, the thrust inthe Northwest – as in most other regions – is for faster injectionand withdrawals with more cycling of gas storage facilities.Unbundled energy services require tighter load balancing. Also,since electricity cannot be stored, power producers increasinglyare putting in gas turbines, which can be quickly fired up forpeaking, drawing on natural gas from storage. Also, the Northwesthas been moving away from its historic reliance on cheaphydro-electric power and wood.

Underground storage has its limits, however, unless anotherproductive gas field like Mist, OR, is found, according to RandyFriedman, Northwest Natural’s gas supply manager, who last monthgave an overview on storage in the region to an industry groupgathered in Portland where Northwest is headquartered.

“People have been looking for gas for years,” Friedman said.”Mist was not found just because anyone knew gas was there. Therehave been other exploration programs all through Oregon andWashington, obviously not as extensive as you would find in Texasand Oklahoma, but there have been many wells drilled over the yearsand there continue to be. They find little pockets of gas, but notenough to be commercially viable.”

Mist always has been operated by out-of-state producers-firstfrom California and now from Texas-peaking at about 10 MMcf/d inthe 1980s and now down to 3 to 4 MMcf/d. Northwest Natural hasmaintained storage rights and as reservoirs have become depletedsince 1989, it has developed the Mist storage operation, with 6.5Bcf of working gas capacity and 80 MMcf/d of deliverability. Itsfirst stage expansion will move those figures to 8.5 Bcf and 125MMcf/d next month, if everything works as Friedman envisions.Ultimately, he wants to add another four depleted gas reservoirs inthe next six years. Mist, which consists of a lot of porous sandconducive to quick injection/withdrawal similar in some respects tosalt caverns found elsewhere, is the only commercial gas field inthe region at present.

The only other underground gas storage, the Jackson Prairiefacility, is located in southwest Washington. It is an aquifercurrently expanding from 15 to 18 Bcf working gas capacity withdeliverability going from a top rate of 550 MMcf/d to 850 MMcf/d.

LNG facilities, which are scattered around the region, representthe only other storage, with a combined current deliverability ofalmost 500 MMcf/d at four facilities.

“Unless something dramatic changes, we have a number of newreservoirs (at Mist) that we will be developing in sort of a’just-in-time’ mode of planning,” Friedman said. “We have activelytalked to others who might be interested in us developing storagefor their needs, but we’re still in the talking phase. “If anyoneelse wants to talk about storage services, they can give me a call(503-721-2475),” said Friedman, referring to the almost 30potential reservoirs at Mist. “We certainly won’t say no to them.”

Richard Nemec, Los Angeles

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