PG&E Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) said it would filewith FERC in April to add 200 MDth/d of firm transportationcapacity to its mainline. A recent open season attracted 25 bids,totaling 2,138 MDth/d of capacity, but GTN said 200 MDth/d was themaximum it could do under the circumstances and under its existing26-cent maximum rate for FT.

“Our effort is going to be on getting this expansion on line asquickly as we can,” said GTN spokeswoman Sandra McDonough. “We’vealready done a lot of the environmental work as part of a proposedexpansion a couple years ago. Plus we can do this without anydownstream expansion and we can do it at our existing rate. We’retrying to get it online before the summer of 2002.”

Much of the new capacity, which will be added to GTN’s mainlinebetween Kingsgate, BC, and Malin, OR, is expected to serve newelectric generation plants that are under construction ordevelopment in the Pacific Northwest and California. The GTNexpansion is expected to be in service in June 2002. It willrequire the addition of 21 miles of 42-inch diameter looping northof Spokane, WA, as well as additional compression at five existingstations.

Peter Lund, vice president for PG&E’s National Energy Group,parent company of GTN, said the plan is to move forward with thisexpansion quickly and “consider our options to do further capacityadditions in the years ahead.”

“What we’ve talked about is expanding the system as much as 1Bcf/d over the next decade, depending on where the market is,” saidMcDonough. “We’ll move forward on this expansion, see how it worksand then at the right time probably go back to the market again forthe next increment.”

The GTN system has been operating near 100% capacity. Its entirecapacity is fully subscribed with an average contract term expiringin 2013. The 1,335-mile system transports has a capacity totransport 2,700 MDth/d of gas from Canada, making it the largestU.S. transporter of Canadian natural gas.

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