Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) has sought FERC authorization tobuild a major expansion/extension of its mainline to providenatural gas to meet the growing fuel needs of power utilities inthe state. If approved by the Commission, the project would makegas available to customers in the southwestern part of the statefor the first time.

More than half of the proposed 205-mile Phase IV project wouldbe devoted to providing direct service to Florida Power &Light’s (FP&L) Fort Meyers generation facility in southwestFlorida, which the utility intends to repower by May 2001. FP&Lplans to spend about $500 million to turn its existing oil-firedfacility into a combined-cycle power plant with a capacity of 1,500MW.

Plans specifically call for the pipeline to extend its 30-inchWest Leg by about 114 miles from Hillsborough County, FL, to theFort Meyers’ generating station, which would receive up to 160,000MMBtu/d of capacity by April 2000. This is more than half of the272,000 MMBtu/d of capacity that would be added by the entireproject.

As another major aspect of the $350 million expansion, FGTproposes to build a new 46-mile Smyrna Beach lateral in thenortheast part of the state to serve a proposed Duke Energygeneration station, according to the pipeline’s application. Thenew line would traverse Lake, Seminole and Volusia counties inFlorida.

The pipeline further seeks to build and add mainline looping,compression totaling 48,570 horsepower, four new delivery pointsincluding three measurement stations, and other associatedfacilities in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The proposedexpansion/extension would provide customers with access to newdeep-water gas supplies via interconnects with Destin Pipeline andTranscontinental Gas Pipeline’s Mobile Bay line.

Eight shippers already have signed 20-year agreements for theentire firm capacity of the proposed project, FGT said. Theyinclude FP&L; Florida Power Corp., Kissimmee Utility Authority;Florida Municipal Power Agency; Peoples Gas System, a division ofTampa Electric Co.; Georgia-Pacific Corp.; National Gypsum Co.; andEnron Capital & Trade Resources. These customers are expectedto invest about $1 billion in additional capital expenditures overthe next few years for new power plants, plantrepowering/modifications and other facilities, the pipeline noted.

FGT, a subsidiary of Citrus Corp., which is owned by Sonat andEnron, has asked the Commission to roll in the costs of the projectwith its Phase III expansion that was placed into service in March1995. In addition, it requested that FERC certificate the projectby Jan. 1, 2000 in time for it to begin service in May 2001.

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