Arizona’s top energy regulator, Marc Spitzer, chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), described a rapidly growing southwestern natural gas market in need of additional gas storage infrastructure at the “Southwestern Gas Storage Technical Conference” FERC held in Phoenix Tuesday.

“We have a population growth that is putting demands on the infrastructure in a lot of areas, ” said Spitzer, who tried to underscore the need for redundancy in his state’s gas infrastructure.

Spitzer noted that the very recent “gasoline crisis” in the state, prompted by a pipeline breakdown, has caused people generally in Arizona to think about the importance of their energy infrastructure. “People don’t usually think about infrastructure; they take it for granted, except when it’s not there as the whole power blackout in the East showed.”

Paul Amirault, a senior executive with EnCana’s Wild Goose Storage, urged that “light-handed regulation” be applied to non-utility storage development in the Southwest. He said EnCana had no current projects identified in Arizona, California or other western states, but is adding a field in Alberta and one in Louisiana. Wild Goose also is undergoing an expansion in California that will be partially completed and available in November. It will boost the project’s deliverability from 200 MMcf/d to about 320 MMcf/d, Amirault said. By April next year when the expansion is completed, Wild Goose deliverability will be at the 700 MMcf/d level.

El Paso Natural Gas Co. used the forum to confirm its purchase of the Copper Eagle Gas Storage project, proposing to develop Arizona’s first-ever natural gas storage facility west of Phoenix. El Paso also touted an open season it plans this winter to assess whether, and when, the proposed Arizona project may get off the ground (see Daily GPI, Aug. 27).

Additional industry perspectives were provided by Red Lake Gas Storage, Unocal Midstream, Desert Crossing, Southwest Gas Corp., Salt River Project, LECG Economics and International Gas Consulting. A lot of information was exchanged in the all-day session but any specific results are still uncertain.

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