TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. (TCPL) announced a one-year firmtransportation open season on its Canadian Mainline from Empress toseveral points. Bids will be accepted from until Oct. 12.

The company recently offered an open season for short term firmtransmission capacity on its mainline in early July (see Daily GPI, July 10). Scrambling for contracts is anactivity TCPL in its history does not have a lot of practice in. Butwith Alliance Pipeline coming online in November, shippers of Canadiangas production are enjoying transportation choices they never hadbefore. The company said it expects spare capacity to rise to levelsof 24% or 1.7 Bcf/d on the mainline until the production market cancatch up. Current rates, toll schedules, and other open seasoninformation is available atwww.transcanada.com/Transmission/index.html.

In other news, TCPL unloaded its 10% interest in the Chileannatural gas distributor Metrogas last week. The company reached a$70 million agreement with the existing shareholders of Metrogas,which delivers gas to residential, commercial and industrialcustomers throughout Santiago.

The sale of its interest in Metrogas brings the company closer tocompletion of its asset divestiture program announced last December byCEO Doug Baldwin (see Daily GPI, Dec. 9,1999).

The company and its subsidiaries had a busy September, includingthe sale of its natural gas gathering and processing assets inSaskatchewan, its Cancarb Ltd., which produces a special grade ofcarbon black used in industrial applications, and in the beginning ofOctober, its Express System crude oil pipeline (see Daily GPI, Sept. 28; Oct. 3).

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