Less than three weeks after receiving a certificate for the project, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given Kern River Gas Transmission a green light to begin constructing some of its 2003 Expansion pipeline and compression facilities in Wyoming and Utah.

When completed the project will double the size of Kern River’s existing capacity on its Wyoming-to-California system, and open the door for nearly 900 MMcf/d or additional natural gas supplies to exit the Rocky Mountain region and head to the flood of new power plants in Nevada and California starting next May. FERC issued the certificate for the mammoth expansion in mid-July (see Daily GPI, July 18).

The $1.2 billion project would bring Kern River’s total system capacity to 1.73 Bcf/d. Under the company’s plans, the expansion would loop about 717 miles of the pipeline’s 922-mile system from Wyoming to Bakersfield, CA, It also would include the addition of 163,700 horsepower of compression at three new and existing compressor stations.

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