Sawgrass Storage LLC has filed an application at FERC to convert a depleted natural gas reservoir into an underground storage facility just west of Perryville in Lincoln and Union parishes in northeast Louisiana.

The facility would have a working capacity of about 30 Bcf and would be capable of delivering and receiving gas at the rate of about 300 MMcf/d. The Sawgrass Storage field would be developed by converting the depleted South Downsville Field in northern Louisiana, which produced 50 Bcf of gas between 1961 and 1984 and was abandoned in 1985. The target storage zone is the Vaughn Sandstone of the Cotton Valley formation.

Sawgrass, a new entrant in the storage field, also proposes to build a 13.9-mile, 30-inch diameter high-pressure pipeline extending northeast from the storage facility to an interconnection with the interstate system of Midcontinent Express Pipeline (MEP), about nine miles southeast of Farmerville, LA.

Sawgrass said it expects to begin providing firm and interruptible storage services and interruptible hub services (parking, loaning, balancing and imbalance trading) to shippers in the MEP production regions of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana at market-based rates by March 2013, assuming the project is approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [CP11-523]. The company held an open open season in late 2010 (see Daily GPI, Oct. 18, 2010).

Sawgrass is a venture of Mill Creek Gas Storage LLC, a subsidiary of Samson Investment Co., a privately held energy exploration and production firm; and Cypress Creek Gas Storage LLC, a subsidiary of Nicor Inc. of Naperville, IL.

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