Bulletin

Dominion Transmission will begin an open season on Tuesday to solicit interest in its proposed Dominion Hub Project, which would be designed to receive and store new natural gas supplies from the western United States for delivery throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The open season, which will end June 27, will solicit interest in 18 million Dth of storage capacity with 300,000 Dth/d of deliverability.

El Paso has a full plate of various maintenance projects set for February; see the bulletin board for details. The ones with the biggest service impacts are set for the South Mainline, which will see Low Pressure System capacity reductions as high as 750 MMcf/d Feb. 7-8 and 610 MMcf/d Feb. 3-6 and again on Feb. 9. Also, the pipeline said, the Washington Ranch Storage facility must be withdrawing at a rate of approximately 180 MMcf/d to accommodate equipment testing on Feb. 9. El Paso said it will lose a large degree of operational flexibility during the Washington Ranch test, “making it critical that all parties scheduling gas on our pipeline manage their volumes carefully to balance receipts and deliveries daily.”

Texas Eastern said an inspection of its Cameron system offshore southwest Louisiana has determined that production from 37 meters (see bulletin board for list) can begin flows at 9 a.m. CDT Wednesday. The pipeline will accept nominations for supply sourced from the posted meters once the meter operator has contacted its Texas Eastern operations account manager to report the status of production. Meters on the Cameron system that are not listed should remain shut in as further investigations continue, Texas Eastern said.

Repairs have been completed on the Mississippi Canyon 109-BP Line and it has been approved to resume flow effective immediately, Sonat said Monday. See the bulletin board for a list of previously shut-in points where flows have been allowed to resume. The pipeline also reported completion of repairs on its South Pass 60 line, where a force majeure has been lifted and nominations were being accepted again Tuesday at Main Pass 116-Vintage. Prior to Hurricane Ivan, Sonat said, it was receiving 800-850 MMcf/d at 68 points upstream of Toca Compressor Station in southeast Louisiana. Field personnel have verified the integrity of the facilities associated with receipts from 50 of these points, it added. The 50 points, which had been flowing about 525 MMcf/d prior to Hurricane Ivan, are currently flowing about 420 MMcf/d, Sonat said.

Due to forecasts of cold weather in its service area, MRT will implement a System Protection Warning at the start of Wednesday’s gas day. See the bulletin board for SPW conditions.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-linepack OFO beyond Wednesday and Thursday. However, its bulletin board projected that linepack would be rising above maximum target levels again Saturday and Sunday.

In an update of restrictions for Friday’s gas day, Texas Eastern had removed one cutting IT-1 deliveries into the M-3 market zone to zero. See the bulletin board for details.

Northern Natural Gas did not extend a System Overrun Limitation notice beyond Tuesday. A bulletin board posting projected that the pipeline’s weighted system temperature was projected to go from 2 degrees above zero Tuesday to 14 degrees Wednesday to 19 degrees Thursday and to 23 degrees Friday. The normal system average at this time of year is 15 degrees, the posting said.

“It is imperative that operators take delivery of quantities that are scheduled immediately,” Kern River said in a Monday bulletin board notice noting that the pipeline was “operating with extremely high linepack due to excessive banking over the weekend.” It also encouraged the scheduling of due-customer imbalance paybacks on an as-available basis.