Capability

The Williams Cos. warned Tuesday in its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that limited access to capital due to its non-investment-grade credit status and insufficient cash flow from operations to pay debt obligations make it imperative that the company sell its previously announced $2.25 billion in additional assets this year.

The New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) is asking FERC to allow it to change the treatment of installed capability (ICAP) transactions in order to make it easier to trade ICAP and firm energy products across control area boundaries. NEPOOL said that its proposed market rule revisions represent a significant step in facilitating inter-control area trading of ICAP, while also focusing on New England’s largest export market, New York.

Sticking with its strategy of adding electric generating capability in key U.S. markets, PPL Corp. yesterday unveiled plans to build a 540 MW power plant near Chicago and, separately, to increase the capacity of its Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania by 100 MW.

Nominations exceeded capacity at NOVA’s Eastern Gate Tuesday,causing a restriction of about 270 MMcf/d, or 46% of IT capability.

In what is becoming a bizarre case of concern to future merchantenergy project proponents, California regulators rescued a secondmerchant underground natural gas storage project from the trashheap Thursday by refusing to support a recommendation to deny theproposal and postponing the item for a future meeting. Analternative to the proposed administrative law judge (ALJ) decisionis likely to be developed by one of the members of the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission.

Anticipating that high system linepack will continue through theweekend due to low gas demand and limited storage injectioncapability, Tennessee Tuesday issued an OFO Action Alert to takeeffect with Thursday’s gas day. Customers under Rate Schedules SA,LMS-PA, LMS-MA and transportation contracts not covered by abalancing agreement must keep deliveries into the system less thanor equal to scheduled quantities plus 2% (or 500 dekatherms,whichever is greater); takes from the system must be more than orequal to scheduled quantities minus 2% or 500 dekatherms. Tennesseeexpects the alert to remain in effect into the start of next week.

Saying it expects high system linepack due to reduced demand andlimited storage injection capability to continue through theweekend, Tennessee is issuing an OFO Action Alert effective withSaturday’s gas day for its entire system. Under the alert, shipperswill be penalized for daily positive imbalances that exceed a 2%tolerance range (or 500 Dth, whichever is greater) from scheduledquantities. Penalties will not apply to customers who underdeliverinto the system or overtake from it, or to customers under RateSchedule LMS-MA who have elected the Storage Swing Option or Swingon Storage. Tennessee expects the alert to remain in effect intonext week.

Amoco’s Hugoton Jayhawk gas processing plant in Ulysses, KS,recently began operations with capability to process 450 MMcf/d andrecover up to 33,000 barrels of gas liquids per day. HugotonJayhawk currently is processing about 400 MMcf/d, of which 280MMcf/d is supplied by Amoco-operated wells.