Accommodate

Chevron announced late Friday it adjusted its 1998 earnings toaccommodate $637 million in “potential losses” due to an OklahomaSupreme Court decision last week affirming a lower court’s rulingagainst the integrated oil and gas company. Chevron said it stillplans to seek aggressive review of the case.

Serving a projected 30 Tcf natural gas market in 2010 willrequire “substantial” expansion of the existing interstate pipelineand storage infrastructure, but the level of construction isn’texpected to be out of line with what the two areas have experiencedin recent years, according to a study released last week by INGAAFoundation Inc. This means that pipe and compressor manufacturersand construction contractors shouldn’t face any problems in meetingthe demand, it said.

Citing the need to accommodate increased Canadian gas suppliesflowing into the Midwest, the sponsors of Independence Pipeline andSupplyLink have urged FERC to promptly issue preliminarydeterminations (PDs) on the non-environmental aspects of theirpipeline projects.

Columbia Gulf Transmission announced it has filed a request withFERC for authorization to expand its mainline by 100,000 Dth/d toaccommodate requests of 19 shippers, 14 of which will be new to thesystem. An open season late last year for Columbia’s Mainline ’99expansion yielded requests for 315,000 Dth/d of firmtransportation, most of which will be provided with existing systemcapacity. About 12,000 Dth/d that was turned back by existingshippers also will be used to serve the new requests.