Kinder Morgan Inc. said subsidiary Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL) has locked up all of its firm transportation capacity under contract through October and most of it through March 2004.

The company announced several new, long-term firm transportation and storage agreements with BP Energy, Tenaska Marketing Ventures, The Peoples Gas Light and Coke Co., Nicor Gas and others for terms extending as long as May 31, 2006. The new agreements replace nearly 450,000 Dth/d of contracts that were originally held by Aquila Merchant Services Inc. and would have expired on Sept. 30 or earlier, the company said.

“At the beginning of 2003, 61% of NGPL’s long-haul contracted capacity was scheduled to expire during the year, whereas today NGPL is essentially sold out for long-haul firm transport capacity through October of 2003 and has 95% of its long-haul firm transportation under contract through March of 2004,” said CEO Richard D. Kinder. “In fact, due to successful re-contracting efforts, only 17% of NGPL’s long-haul capacity is scheduled to expire during 2004, and we expect the great majority of that will be re- contracted with current customers.”

Additionally, NGPL has entered into several new firm storage contracts to replace contracts that expired earlier this year. At the end of the first quarter, NGPL had 25.4 Bcf of firm storage available, much of which had been previously held by marketing companies that exited the trading business. Currently, NGPL has only 1.5 Bcf of firm storage available and market demand has grown stronger in recent weeks.

“BP is now one of our largest customers, having increased its transportation service on NGPL by more than 250% and doubling its storage position,” Kinder said.

Earlier last week NGPL announced that We Energies extended its firm transportation contracts. NGPL is providing WE Energies up to 111,000 MMBtu/d of annual firm transportation service and 19,133 MMBtu/d of seasonal firm. The new agreements continue through March 31, 2008, and replace contracts that were scheduled to expire by March 2004.

In addition to the transportation agreements, We Energies also has contracted with NGPL for an additional 2.25 Bcf of firm storage service. The new storage agreements, which took effect last April, represent an 86% increase over existing firm storage capacity, and will continue primarily through March 2008.

We Energies is the principal subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corp., serving more than one million electric customers in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and more than 980,000 natural gas customers in Wisconsin under the trade names of Wisconsin Electric Power Co. and Wisconsin Gas Co.

NGPL operates a 10,000-mile pipeline system with peak deliverability of 5.7 Bcf/d. It is the largest gas transporter to the Chicago market.

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