While Questar continues preliminary work on its California-boundmainline, Kern River Pipeline has put its plans to run a newlarge-diameter pipeline into Southern California on hold, awaitingregulatory action from the dilatory California Public UtilitiesCommission.

“It is just a watch-and-wait situation” for us right now. said aspokesperson for Kern River, a subsidiary of Williams. The projecthas been “put on hold in order to wait and see what develops inCalifornia” where state officials are in the midst of a two-yeareffort to restructure the natural gas industry.

This spring Kern River officials said they had receivedexpressions of interest from large industrial customers equating toabout 1 Bcf/d of supplies in and around the industrial corridorsof Los Angeles County and at the port city of Long Beach. In themeantime, Southern California Gas has pushed for state regulatoryand legislative changes that would make it harder for competingpipelines to take away some of the gas utility’s largest customers.Those proposals will not be acted upon until later this year.

Nevertheless, a second proposal for a new interstate pipelineinto California by Salt Lake City-based Questar is moving aheadwith a slightly delayed schedule, according to its spokesperson.Called the Southern Trails Pipeline, Questar has an applicationwith FERC to convert the 700-mile former ARCO oil pipeline from thenorthwest corner of New Mexico into Long Beach to carry 120-130MMcf/d of natural gas.

The spokesperson indicated that Questar expected to have itsfirst major contracts for the new pipeline ready to announce in thenext few months. The firm is in the midst of completing anenvironmental impact report and other regulatory matters, but ispointing toward beginning construction in the spring of next year.It plans to add seven compression stations for natural gastransmission and make other modifications in the 16-inch-diameterpipeline.

“We’re going through the same process with FERC in terms ofenvironmental assessment as we would have gone through to build awhole new pipeline,” the Questar spokesperson said.

Constructed in 1957 to carry crude oil, the former ARCO oilsystem includes Lines 90, 91 and 92, which Questar purchased lastyear for $40 million.

Richard Nemec, Los Angeles

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