While the new Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline is ready toflow, with government approvals on both sides of the border, itwill be sometime later in the month before Sable Island wells areoperational, according to a spokeswoman for the new Nova Scotia toNew England pipeline.

“We’re not actually in operation. What we’ve gotten is the finalapproval from the National Energy Board (NEB) to go into service. Wenow just have to wait for Sable Offshore Energy to provide us with thenatural gas to transport and we’re hearing that they’ll be readysometime in December. So we’re essentially in stand-by,” saidMaritimes spokeswoman Krista Jenkins. Earlier, NGI had been told thepipeline would be flowing gas Dec. 1 by a Westcoast spokesman, one ofthe partners in the pipeline venture. (See Daily GPI, Dec. 1).

Regarding negotiations with the Union of Nova Scotia Indians,Jenkins said talks are proceeding and a settlement should bereached soon for submissions to the NEB. A December deadline for asettlement with the Indians was rendered moot Nov. 30 when the NEBsaid the pipeline could commence operations on a temporary basisuntil Jan. 20. If the dispute over the Indians’ territorial claimsare not resolved by then, the parties can petition to have thetemporary authorization extended.

M&NE had asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,which already had extended the original Nov. 1 deadline until Dec.1 for deliveries on the U.S. side to extend that deadline this timeuntil Jan. 1, 2000 in light of the Canadian dispute and a courtorder for further NEB review. No mention was made in the FERCfiling of production delays. In its letter order setting the Dec. 1date FERC had been adamant that the pipeline, which originally hadbeen certificated to flow gas Nov. 1, 1998, meet the latestdeadline. FERC has yet to reply to Maritimes’ latest request.

Sable Offshore Energy Group spokeswoman Cynthia Langlands saidthe producers are busy completing the final tests in their 23-monthprocess to bring Atlantic gas production to market for the firsttime. “At the moment we have successfully tested five of our sixwells that we’ll have up and running for first gas. Probably withinthe next 10 days or so we will see first gas at our centralprocessing platform offshore…and then from there it will travelto our Goldboro plant. We’ll do some commissioning at Goldboro, andthen send [gas] to the Maritimes & Northeast line shortly afterthat. Our plan is to have two wells up and running in 10 days. Thisis not cast in stone, but a week later we would likely see anotherwell and then the other wells maybe two or three weeks after that.That’s the ramping up. It probably will take a month to bring upall six wells.”

She said Sable producers expect to be flowing 450 MMcf/d bymid-January, increasing to greater than 500 MMcf/d when proposedNova Scotia laterals are in-service in November 2000.

“It has been a long road. We have accomplished a lot in 23months. We’re now just doing the final commissioning and testing.We did have three main hurricanes come through in the fall, and Ithink all the attention and detail we have been focusing on thecommissioning and testing process [has extended the delay]. Thereare a lot of facilities. We’re just talking a difference of a fewweeks from what we originally targeted two or three years ago.” Shesaid there was no one thing holding up the production. “It’s justthe size and scale of the project.”

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