EnCana Gas Storage, the largest independent natural gas storage owner and operator in North America, has announced plans to build a new high-deliverability gas storage facility in southwestern Louisiana.

EnCana affiliate Starks Gas Storage LLC will develop the project by converting existing underground brine caverns into a gas storage facility with connections to a number of large-diameter gas pipelines, according to the company. Starks, which is located about 25 miles west of Lake Charles, LA, plans to initially develop 8 Bcf of gas storage capacity with a withdrawal rate of approximately 400 MMcf/d.

Starks is seeking customers who are interested in booking capacity in the proposed facilities. The project is expected to be full in service by the third quarter of 2005, EnCana said. EnCana Gas Storage is preparing to seek project approval from either Louisiana regulators or FERC, “depending on where the customer load falls,” said spokeswoman Jamie Craddock in Houston.

An application for the new storage facility will be submitted to regulators following an open season to be conducted during the first quarter of 2004, she noted.

“This new storage project offers customers the benefits of what we believe will be the lowest cost, and fastest in-service, incremental, high-deliverability storage in the Gulf Coast area,” said EnCana Gas Storage President Rick Daniel.

“The Starks project is particularly attractive because we can quickly and economically convert existing caverns into gas storage, rather than having to start leaching new caverns from scratch,” noted Dean Cockshutt, the company’s vice president of engineering and operations.

EnCana said the Starks project would be located in an area with strong gas demand from industrial processing and power generation, as well as proposed and expanding liquefied natural gas import terminals. Pipeline interconnections are being considered on three major pipelines — Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line, Tennessee Gas Pipeline and Texas Eastern Transmission.

EnCana Gas Storage, a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of EnCana Corp., also owns and operates Wild Goose Storage Inc. in northern California and Salt Plains Storage Inc. in Oklahoma. EnCana Corp. indirectly owns and operates the AECO Hub, a storage complex in Alberta, Canada.

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