No matter how powerful the news media might seem, it can’t reverse the flow of gas on a major interstate transmission pipeline. Responding to a financial analyst’s question Wednesday, Kinder Morgan Inc. CEO Rich Kinder said recent rumors of a flow reversal on Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) were greatly exaggerated.

“Well, it started out, I guess, in the mind of a reporter who asked a question and we said…’Well, yes, we might do a backhaul and might move volumes west through displacement,’ and I guess the confusion was that he thought displacement was we’re going to turn the line route,” Kinder explained.

“Look, if our customers wanted to reverse that line, wanted us to reverse that line tomorrow, we would be happy to work with them and do it.”

However, REX has eight and a half years worth of contracts yet to run, and the pipeline is “completely full right now” moving gas from west to east, Kinder said.

A report published online July 6 by Dow Jones & Co. Inc.’s MarketWatch said, “…Kinder Morgan now ‘stands ready’ to reverse its pipeline to pump gas from the East Coast as far west as California” and attributed the information to Mark Kissel, president of Kinder Morgan’s western region. He was talking about displacement.

Through displacement, theoretically a Marcellus Shale molecule could wind up in Oregon via REX and the soon-to-commence Ruby Pipeline, Kinder said. “Whether that happens I don’t know. But that would certainly be displacement.”

In fact, REX has a proposal pending before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for new backhaul service to allow transport of producers’ landfill gas and other “green” gas from East Coast and Midwest markets to as far west as California (see Daily GPI, July 19).

As the shale revolution has shown, many unexpected things happen in the gas business, and Kinder didn’t close the door on one day reversing at least a portion of REX. “We will make it do whatever our customers want us to do in the long term with that very valuable, huge 42-inch [diameter] conduit that we have in REX,” he said.

In the second quarter Kinder Morgan had earnings of $132.1 million compared with $46 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenue was $2.03 billion compared with $1.99 billion in the year-ago quarter.

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