El Paso Natural Gas has decided to postpone what it called”routine” maintenance projects on its system in order to maintainthe flow of natural gas into the California market to meet thesurge in demand there. The higher demand has been created by ashortfall in energy imports from the Northwest region, which hasbeen gripped by cold weather.

The pipeline deferred indefinitely two maintenance projects onthe South Mainline — at Wenden Station in Arizona and the WendenA turbine — that were scheduled to take place today and Friday.It also deferred indefinitely work on the North Mainline atHackberry 2 turbine in Arizona, which was to have occurred Dec.10-17.

If El Paso had gone forward with the maintenance projects, thecompany said throughput would have been cut by about 150 MMcf/d onits South Mainline, by 50-75 MMcf/d on the Havasu Crossover, and by80 MMcf/d on its North Mainline.

The maintenance work at the Wenden Station, which is located onthe south end of the Havasu Crossing, involved replacing batteries.”It has been agreed to by our operations people that thosebatteries are still in decent enough shape, [so] it’s not a concernto continue running like this. And with the throughput situationand high gas prices [in California], it’s in everybody’s bestinterest that we not do this maintenance at this time,” saidCharlie Mathis, an administrator for pipeline control at El Paso.

He estimated the El Paso system presently is running at 85-90%of the throughput level it had prior to the explosion nearCarlsbad, NM, last August. That blast reduced the pipeline’soperating capacity by 200 MMcf/d.

Mathis said about 1.2 Bcf/d presently is being delivered intoCalifornia over El Paso’s South Mainline, and 1.5-1.7 Bcf/d isbeing delivered at Topock, AZ, over its North Mainline.

In addition to the deferred maintenance projects, El Paso took aWaha GE turbine off line last Sunday to investigate a vibrationproblem. That has reduced capacity on the South Mainline by about50 MMcf/d, said Mathis. He noted the turbine is scheduled to beback in service Friday.

To offset the impact of the turbine outage on the market, ElPaso decided to put off until this weekend work it had planned todo on Line 1100 between the Pecos River and the Guadalupe Stations— a line that was affected by the explosion last August. The linewill be taken out of service Dec. 8 and returned to service on Dec.9, reducing the capacity of the South Mainline by 50 MMcf/d eachday.

In the near term, El Paso is scheduled to run a smart pigthrough Line 3222 on its North Mainline on Dec. 12, which willreduce capacity out of the San Juan Basin by about 50-100 MMcf/d,Mathis said. Pigging also is planned for Line 3201, which will cutcapacity by about 150 MMcf/d. The reductions will affect pointsupstream of the Bondad Mainline and Gallup.

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