Pacific Gas & Electric belatedly issued a customer-specific Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Tuesday on its California Gas Transmission system, then expanded it into a systemwide OFO for Wednesday. Penalties of $1/Dth were set in both cases for exceeding a 5% tolerance on positive daily imbalances. In a separate message the giant dual utility also said system inventories were “trending toward being outside the upper operating limits as we approach the July 4th holiday weekend. High pipeline inventory has been a consistent issue for almost all Independence Day weekends since 1998.” Encouraging customers to balance their gas supplies with usage, PG&E concluded with a cheery, “Enjoy an independent and OFO-free weekend!”

A System Protection Warning will take effect Wednesday on MRT and last through the start of next Tuesday’s gas day. MRT said it will not schedule any volumes that result in a shipper having a daily long imbalance, and will not accept any makeup of short imbalance positions.

Westcoast declared a systemwide OFO for Wednesday until further notice, saying higher linepack was forecasted to impact its plant production. “During the Supply Imbalance Management strategy evaluation period, OFO charges will be simulated based on 20% of the Station 2 gas price” as defined in the pipeline’s tariff, Westcoast said. It maintained the normal tolerance range of 10% pack/10% draft (minimum 500 gigajoules in each case) for the OFO.

Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day for market-area customers in effect through at least Tuesday, but loosened the tolerance for negative daily imbalances from 10% to 25%.

Citing high line pressures in Wisconsin in the Northern Fuel Segment (ML-7), ANR said total Viking-Marshfield receipt capacity was being limited to 250 MMcf/d from Tuesday through next Monday. Based on current nominations at Viking-Marshfield, ANR said it anticipated that the reduction would result in the curtailment of IT and Firm Secondary nominations.

©Copyright 2008Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.