4202

Plant operator Williams Field Services declared force majeure after the Opal Plant in Wyoming experienced an emergency shutdown due to a power outage about 5:25 p.m. MDT Thursday, but the plant outage ended around 1 a.m. Friday, according to a representative of Jonah Gathering System behind Opal. A WFS spokesman later confirmed that the outage didn’t last much more than six hours and operations were resumed immediately after the power was restored. However, WFS made this bulletin board posting Friday: “As a result of this situation field units across the system were knocked offline. Field technicians continue to work diligently to bring gas back onto the system. Nominations were kept whole for gas day 04/07/05; however, Williams will need to make up the interconnect pipeline shortfall by lowering the EFM tolerance going forward until the imbalance has been eliminated. Shippers should expect to see market cuts for the next several days.” Kern River was reporting low linepack Friday in its farthest upstream segment (Muddy Creek to Elberta), which a spokesman confirmed was a result of the Opal shortfall. Kern River encouraged shippers in that segment to resolve any due-pipeline imbalance paybacks.