Coastal’s Colorado Interstate Gas (CIG) is holding an openseason for a new interstate pipeline between its existing westernterminus in Uintah County, UT, and an interconnection with thePaiute Pipeline Co. system near Elko, NV. The pipe could becompetition to a project announced in January by Williams’Northwest Pipeline and Paiute.

CIG’s project is said to connect the growing northern Nevadamarket to Canadian and Rocky Mountain production. The new pipelinewill have interconnections for receipt and delivery with CIG,Paiute, Northwest, Questar Pipeline and Kern River GasTransmission. The pipeline also will pass through the developingcoalbed methane fields near Price, UT, giving the production areaaccess to both eastern and western markets. The line’s initialcapacity will be up to 250,000 MMBtu/d with a scheduled in-servicedate of Dec. 1, 2000. The open season runs until 5 p.m. MT April 6.

An affiliate of CIG’s proposed pipe has arranged 96,000 MMBtu/dof TF-1 service on Northwest with a primary receipt point ofStanfield, OR, and a primary delivery point of Ignacio, CO.Interested customers may request a release of this capacity todeliver Canadian gas to Uintah County and to the interconnect withthe new pipeline. Price producers may also request capacity todeliver gas to Ignacio and interconnections with Transwestern andEl Paso Natural Gas. CIG’s Uintah Lateral will interconnectdirectly to the new pipeline, providing Rocky Mountain producersaccess to western markets. CIG customers may also request capacityto deliver gas to Ignacio.

The open season for Northwest’s Silver Gem Lateral to be builtin northern Nevada was concurrent with an open season on Paiute.The companies said they plan to have both the Silver Gem Lateraland expansion of Paiute in service by November, 2000. Williams andPaiute are developing the projects to meet demand from new andexisting markets in northern Nevada. Silver Gem will add about90,000 Dth/d of capacity at an estimated cost of about $79.2million. The project requires about 121 miles of 24-inch pipe, anew compressor station and two new meter stations. The lateral willinterconnect with Northwest’s existing mainline near Filer, ID, andextend to Wells, NV.

CIG spokesman Steve Coffin said the Northwest project doesconflict with his company’s. “But that’s not to say they’re bothnot going to be done. How the two end up impacting each other willlargely depend, really at this point, on the results of the openseason. The projects have distinct differences as well as somesimilarities, so it may be that there’s a market for both.” He saidSilver Gem’s market is more narrowly defined with fewer customersthan CIG intends to have. “We would serve different markets. Itwould be a different size pipe.” He said CIG sees severalprospective customers that could be served in northern Nevada butwould not go into details. A Northwest spokeswoman said CIG’sproject “could be construed to be a competing project” but wouldnot comment further.

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