Growing demand and limited gas transportation capacity in theTidewater area of southeastern Virginia, northeastern NorthCarolina and southeastern Maryland prompted Columbia GasTransmission to test the market for a pipeline expansion in thatarea.

Columbia is holding a two-month open season to assess interestin the proposed Homestead Expansion Project, which would providefirm transportation services to the company’s operating areas oneand 10, which include the tidewater area. The open season startedNov. 17 and will close Jan. 19.

“Southeastern Virginia is one of the most heavily constrainedareas on our system,” said David Pentzien, vice president of marketdevelopment for Columbia Gas Transmission. “Over the past severalmonths, we have received several inquiries relating to firmtransportation service capacity availability in this region and webelieve significant demand for new capacity is concentrated in thisregion. We expect the response to this open season will be furtherproof of the increased natural gas demand we are experiencingthroughout Virginia markets.”

Michael Strauss, Columbia Gas Transmission’s manager of marketdevelopment, said the project also is intended to compete withpipeline expansions proposed by Dominion Transmission and DukeEnergy. Duke’s Patriot project would extend the East Tennesseesystem into North Carolina, while Dominion’s Greenbrier projectwould extend from West Virginia to North Carolina.

“Ours is a little farther east of where these guys are” but allthree projects are targeting new power generation load as well asgeneral market growth in the area. “Serving a new power plant isjust like adding a new LDC in one shot,” said Strauss.

“This past summer our pipeline was interrupted in this areapretty much all summer,” he noted. “We’re seeing just an extremeamount of development from power plants. We’re getting quite a fewcalls from new developers and LDCs as well.

“The real tight constraint is on what we call the oldCommonwealth Gas Pipeline intrastate system, which extends down tothe Norfolk and Virginia Beach area. But we’ve also had requestsfrom Maryland too.”

Columbia will evaluate nominations for service under variousrate schedules, including Firm Transportation Service (FTS), FirmStorage Service (FSS) and Storage Service Transportation (SST). Italso will consider requests for summer (April-October) and winter(November-March) seasonal services.

Interested parties are invited to submit a bid package, whichmay be obtained from Columbia’s Navigator electronic bulletin board(www.columbianavigator.com), or by contacting Michael Strauss at(703)-227-3364 or at mjstrauss@ceg.com.

Rocco Canonica

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