FERC last Thursday gave Wyoming Interstate Co. Ltd (WIC) the green light to place in service its Kanda Lateral and mainline compression facilities to meet the growing demand for take-away capacity in the Uintah Basin in Utah.

The 124-mile, 24-inch diameter lateral begins at a new pipeline interconnect located near the Natural Buttes Field in Uintah County, UT, and extends in a northerly direction through Daggett County, UT, and interconnects with WIC’s existing mainline in Sweetwater County, WY [CP07-14].

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission letter order approved WIC’s request to place into service the remaining 71.2 miles of the Kanda lateral and the mainline compression facilities at the Wamsutter Compressor Station in Sweetwater. This comes only a few weeks after the Commission cleared the way for WIC to begin operating the first 52 miles of the lateral, which would interconnect with Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corp. in Uintah.

WIC, a pipeline subsidiary of El Paso Corp., proposed the “Kanda Lateral and Mainline Expansion Project” to address the demand for additional pipe capacity to transport gas from production areas in the Uintah Basin to other markets and the demand for additional mainline capacity sought by Kerr-McGee, which is owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

The proposed facilities would increase the pipeline’s capacity out of the Uintah Basin area by approximately 406,000 Dth/d and its mainline capacity by up to 150,000 Dth/d, according to WIC.

Kerr-McGee has signed precedent agreements for 400,000 Dth/d of capacity on the Kanda Lateral for 15 years, and for 137,000 Dth/d of mainline expansion capacity from Kanda to Wamsutter for the first two years of the agreement, increasing to 150,000 Dth/d on the second anniversary of the in-service date of the mainline expansion facilities. At Wamsutter, Kerr-McGee would have access to a number a pipelines that serve the Midwest and eastern markets.

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