Egan Hub Storage LLC Friday asked FERC for the green light to place a fourth cavern at its storage facility in Acadia Parish, LA, into service by Wednesday (July 29) with an interim capacity of approximately 5.5 Bcf.

“Egan Hub originally had planned to place the fourth cavern into service in August 2009 at an initial capacity of approximately 6 Bcf, along with [a] 16.5-mile header pipeline and other associated facilities. [But] in response to changes in market conditions…Egan Hub now is undertaking the construction of only approximately eight of the 16.5 miles of header pipeline and other associated facilities in 2009, in addition to the ongoing leaching of the fourth cavern,” the storage company said. Egan Hub said it plans to construct the remaining 8.5 miles of the header pipeline in 2010.

In October 2007 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a certificate to Egan Hub to build the fourth cavern with a capacity of 10.5 Bcf, nearly twice the capacity that it is seeking to place into service now (see Daily GPI, Oct. 19, 2007). The company did not indicate when it plans to add the remaining 5 Bcf of capacity.

The project approved by FERC called for working gas capacity of 8 Bcf in the fourth storage cavern; an expansion of the capacity of Egan Hub’s Line 73 header system via the construction of the 16.5-mile. 24-inch diameter loop; a new meter and regulating (M&R) station to increase interconnect capacity with Texas Gas Transmission; an upgrade to the existing Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) M&R station; and associated interconnecting piping and other facilities.

The expanded header line, which would begin at the Egan Hub facility and terminate at the Texas Gas M&R station, would allow Egan to receive and deliver gas to liquefied natural gas (LNG) takeaway pipelines in the region and to meet the increased demand for capacity at the Tetco and Texas Gas M&R stations, said Egan Hub, a subsidiary of Spectra Energy Corp.

When completed, the Egan Hub storage site is expected to have an overall capacity of 42 Bcf, and its maximum daily withdrawal rate would increase to 2,700 MMcf/d from 2,500 MMcf/d.

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