Afternoon

In an e-mail message that didn’t get sent until early afternoon Friday, Southern California Gas declared a high-linepack OFO for Saturday, saying it would assess Buy-Back charges in accordance with its tariffs to customers who delivered into its system more than 110% of their actual gas usage on the OFO day.

Late Monday afternoon El Paso declared a Strained Operating Condition for a draft condition on its entire system, effective with Tuesday’s gas day. The imbalance tolerance was set initially at 10%, but El Paso said it will reduce the tolerance “if conditions do not sufficiently improve. Increased loads on the system with takes in excess of scheduled quantities in combination with underperformance in the supply areas due to pipeline/producer interconnect maintenance and equipment outages due to high ambient [temperature] conditions and power failures is resulting in a draft to the system that could lead to a low linepack condition. Additionally, the power failures in the Permian/West Texas area are impacting compressor station operations and Washington Ranch [storage facility] is currently down as a result of a loss of power.” Interruptible Storage Service was suspended Tuesday until further notice.

Sea Robin Pipeline lifted at the start of Monday’s gas day an OFO that had been issued late Friday afternoon for all receipt points. System pressures had returned to an acceptable operating range, Sea Robin said.

After capturing back some of their recent losses in Monday morning trading, June natural gas futures plunged lower in the afternoon, sinking below psychological support at $11 to close out Monday’s regular session at $10.954, down 14 cents from Friday’s close.

Southern California Gas did not extend a high-linepack OFO beyond Thursday.

Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Cameron Parish, LA, received its first shipment Friday afternoon, according to the U.S. Coast Guard in Port Arthur, TX. The initial cargo came more than three years after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project (see Daily GPI, Dec. 16, 2004). Freeport LNG in Texas is scheduled to receive its first shipment Tuesday.

May natural gas futures tested lower price levels in Wednesday morning trade before rebounding in a big way during the afternoon. After notching a $9.400 low, the prompt-month contract soared to a $9.950 high before closing out the day at $9.832, up 10.8 cents from Tuesday. May crude also rebounded Wednesday, gaining $3.85 to close at $104.83/bbl.

Northern Natural Gas ended a System Overrun Limitation for all market-area zones Saturday after it had been in effect for two days.

Sea Robin Pipeline announced that the Hess Corp.-operated Sea Robin Gas Processing Plant had returned to service Tuesday afternoon and that the pipeline was again accepting Plant Thermal Reduction nominations. Columbia Gulf said it would resume accepting up to 612,281 Dth/d in receipt nominations Thursday from Sea Robin-Erath; it had reduced the volume to 100,000 Dth/d Tuesday after the plant was shut in Sunday.