Tres Palacios Gas Storage LLC, a subsidiary of Westport, CT-based NGS Investments LP, Wednesday asked FERC for clearance to place its entire storage header system in Texas in service on July 20.

“Action by that day will give Tres Palacios adequate time to alert its customers to the availability of additional receipt point capabilities for storage injections and will give those customers time to make the necessary upstream transportation and gas supply arrangements,” wrote attorneys for the storage company.

Tres Palacios said it was nearing completion of the construction of the segment of the header system located between interconnections with Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) and Tennessee Gas Pipeline. “With the completion of this construction, Tres Palacios will have completed construction of all the header system facilities authorized in the certificate order,” the company said.

The 41.72-mile, looped bidirectional pipeline will be connected to a number of interstate and intrastate pipelines besides Transco and Tennessee, including Florida Gas Transmission, Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America, Kinder Morgan Tejas, Texas Eastern Transmission, Enterprise Texas, Houston Pipe Line and Enterprise Intrastate.

Tres Palacios said it has constructed and placed into service nine of the 12 pipeline interconnects and associated measurement facilities authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

In late 2008 and early this year Tres Palacios received authorization to place into service storage caverns one and two, as well as its gas handling facility and previously constructed portions of the header pipeline system (see Daily GPI, Oct. 2, 2008). The storage facility, located in Matagorda County, TX, is using existing underground salt caverns on the Markham Dome.

A third cavern is targeted for service in 2010, according to Tres Palacios. The three-cavern facility has planned working gas storage capacity of 36.62 Bcf, and will have the ability to receive injections of up to 1 Bcf/d and handle withdrawals of up to 2.5 Bcf/d.

NGS is a relatively new private company managed by industry veterans with experience in gas storage development, including some former Sempra Energy gas storage officials who helped develop the Bluewater storage field in Michigan among other projects.

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