Kern River Gas Transmission announced Monday it had completed construction and was flowing gas through emergency expansion facilities on its Kern River natural gas transmission system. The expansion, which consists mostly of adding compression, increased delivery capacity of the Wyoming to California pipeline by 135,000 Dt/d.

Williams had filed a certificate application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on March 15.

“We received FERC approval within three weeks of filing–an unprecedented turnaround. This allowed us to expedite the construction process and bring additional supplies of natural gas to the California market,” said Kirk Morgan, director of business development for Kern River. “We anticipate most of the new natural gas will go directly to power generation facilities.” The Commission approved the project over objections from several parties that the extra deliveries would simply replace supplies already scheduled through the Wheeler Ridge delivery point (see Daily GPI, April 9).

The emergency expansion project added two new compressor stations in Utah and one in California, as well as upgraded compressor units at three existing compressor stations in Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. The installation of these facilities increased the transportation capacity on Kern River by approximately 19%. Williams completed the multimillion dollar project more than three weeks ahead of schedule.

“The extraordinary effort put forth by our contractors, employees and permitting agencies resulted in a successful completion of the project ahead of schedule,” stated Micheal Dunn, manager of project management for Kern River.

The expansion was aimed at increasing the aggregate primary firm delivery rights of Kern River shippers at Wheeler Ridge to about 527 MMcf/d from 450 MMcf/d At the same time, the design delivery capacity at the Wheeler Ridge Meter Station was increased to about 800 MMcf/d from 598 MMcf/d to accommodate existing shippers, new expansion shippers and Mojave Pipeline shippers..

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