Clay

National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV) COO Clay Williams said Friday the company is facing “headwinds” in North America on weaker-than-expected demand for pressure pumping and equipment.

Carroll County and operators for Chesapeake Energy Corp. continue to hold the lion’s share of permits issued and producing wells in the Utica Shale, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) figures.

Questar posted an OFO requiring all ISS customers at its Clay Basin storage facility with a negative inventory balance as of March 31, resulting from month-end allocation of storage fuel, to transfer gas in-place to bring the inventory to zero by the end of business on April 30. “An in-place transfer is required to remedy the negative inventory so further storage fuel will not be allocated in April 2011,” Questar said. Any ISS contract with negative inventory remaining at the end of April will be terminated and the balance cashed out, it added.

MRT said it will lift Thursday the cold weather System Protection Warning that it implemented Jan. 19 for northbound volumes.

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

Citing “unseasonably high inventory levels at Clay Basin [storage facility],” Questar said it will not accept any ISS (interruptible) injection or transfer nominations there effective June 1 until further notice.

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

Northwest notified shippers that due to the current shut-in of Questar’s Clay Basin storage facility (see Daily GPI, Oct. 8) and the need to protect its own Jackson Prairie storage account for the upcoming winter season, “Northwest is no longer able to mitigate the overscheduling of Kemmerer” Compressor Station. Thus a recall advisory and realignment OFO were to become effective Saturday (Oct. 11) until further notice, Northwest said. It will issue the daily OFO obligations to affected parties if the primary firm scheduled quantity through Kemmerer is above the design capacity of 655,000 Dth/d. Shippers with OFO obligations must realign nominations from receipt points south of Kemmerer to receipt points north of Kemmerer, “or may elect to voluntarily reduce their nominations through Kemmerer by the OFO volume or take other mutually agreeable action to alleviate the problem,” the pipeline added.

Northwest has scheduled installation of a filter/separator at its interconnect with Questar’s Clay Basin Storage Facility for April 27-28. Physical injections and withdrawals from or to Northwest will not be possible for those gas days, Questar said.