The complaints filed against El Paso Natural Gas have reachedsuch a mammoth proportion that the staff for the Federal EnergyRegulatory Commission may be forced to set aside a shelf or twojust for these cases.

The latest complaint comes from Northwest Pipeline Corp., whichhas accused El Paso of violating the Gas Industry Standards Board’s(GISB) standards pertaining to confirmation deadlines andconfirmation quantities.

Specifically the complaint, which was filed Jan. 25, accuses ElPaso of making changes to the confirmed amounts scheduled to flowbetween the two systems after the confirmation deadline, leading toshipper imbalances on Northwest.

As a temporary fix, Northwest said it agreed to adjust itsscheduled quantities to match those of El Paso’s between November1998 and June 1999. But afterward it told El Paso that it wouldhave to comply with the GISB standards. “As of the date of thiscomplaint, even though Northwest has talked with El Paso onnumerous occasions each month…, El Paso has failed to comply andis still basing its scheduled quantities on confirmations submittedafter the GISB confirmation deadline,” Northwest told theCommission.

Northwest said it has received “numerous complaints” from itsshippers regarding the scheduled quantity discrepancies with ElPaso. It has on occasion since last June created shipper imbalanceson its own system to resolve the discrepancies, Northwest noted. Infact, it estimated that scheduled quantity discrepancies owing toEl Paso’s failure to comply with GISB standards were about 110,000Dth this past December.

Northwest said it asked the FERC Enforcement Hotline lastOctober to resolve the matter, but was told it couldn’t addressNorthwest’s problem because of the ongoing complaint that AmocoProduction and Burlington Resources Oil & Gas filed against ElPaso. FERC issued an order on complaint in the Amoco vs. El Pasocase in November, but still the Enforcement Hotline said itcouldn’t deal with the Northwest’s problem, according to Northwest.

After being rebuffed first by El Paso and then by theEnforcement Hotline, Northwest said it had no other choice but tofile the complaint. The complaint asks the Commission to order ElPaso to comply with the GISB standards, as well as to determine thescheduled quantities at the interconnect point between Northwestand El Paso for the period dating back to June 1, 1999.

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