The announcement earlier this week by Peoples Energy and CoastalCorp.’s ANR Pipeline that they were teaming up to build a 130-milepipeline into the Wisconsin market has left at least one sponsor ofthe competing Guardian Pipeline project scratching his head.

“I guess I’m surprised from the standpoint it’s a completereversal of what they [ANR] had been saying just a few days before[the announcement], which was there wasn’t a market need” for a newpipeline into Wisconsin, said Greg Palmer, president of Viking GasTransmission and co-sponsor of the Guardian project, which seeks tointroduce pipeline competition into Wisconsin for the first timeever. Wisconsin currently is served by only one pipe-ANR.

ANR has been a sharp critic of the Guardian project. “I don’tknow what their objective is [with their pipeline proposal], butthey’ve consistently said there’s not a need for a new pipelineinto the state of Wisconsin, and that they could expand theirexisting system cheaper. But now they seem to have done a complete180-degree turn,” he told NGI.

“I would hope not,” said Palmer, when asked if FERC may beforced to choose between the Guardian and Peoples/ANR pipelines. “Ithink our project stands on its own merits.” And given that theapplication for Guardian already has been filed at the Commission,”I think we’re ahead” in the race to serve Wisconsin, which he saidis the “only part of the country that doesn’t have two pipelinesserving it.”

Coastal spokesman Joe Martucci noted the company still stands byits criticism of the Guardian project. “What we said aboutGuardian-and it’s still true-is that it is redundant capacity thatwould serve a market that is already being served” by ANR. Thatmarket is Milwaukee, WI. He believes any “growth needs in Wisconsincan be met by ANR with smaller phase-in expansions.”

While he says Guardian would provide “duplicative” service, theproposed Peoples/ANR pipeline would serve “incremental growth,”primarily electric power generation, that can’t be served due tothe lack of existing pipeline infrastructure, according toMartucci.

The growth markets targeted by the Peoples/ANR pipeline includenew power generation facilities, existing generation plants thatswitch to natural gas and local utility growth, he noted. “About60% of our projected market area would include northern Illinois,Chicago and northern Indiana,” and the remaining 40% would be insoutheastern Wisconsin.

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