Clay

As the two smallest of the private-sector energy utilities in Colorado, Kinder Morgan and Aquila are drawing a line in the Rocky Mountain clay soil with the state regulatory commission staff’s proposal to change the rules on how and what the electric and natural gas distributors must do to determine allocation of their costs. The two energy suppliers argue that the proposal will result in long, costly litigation fights among the companies, Public Utilities Commission (PUC) staff and customers.

Questar reported experiencing a mechanical failure of unit #5 at its Clay Basin storage facility Sunday evening, and as a result, injection capacity was reduced by 20,000 Dth/d to 350,000 Dth/d for Tuesday’s gas day. The restriction will continue until repairs are completed.

Questar canceled Thursday the shut-in of its Clay Basin storagefacility that had been scheduled for Oct. 24-25. The maintenancework will be rescheduled next spring.

Questar experienced a mechanical failure Thursday in Unit #7 atits Clay Basin storage facility. Barring unexpected complications,repairs should be complete by today and the unit available forservice again on Tuesday’s gas day, the pipeline said. Injectioncapacity has been reduced to 235,000 Dth/d during the outage.Allocation of injection capacity was expected to occur each day,with the impact determined by customer nominations. However, thereis no impact on withdrawal nominations, Questar said.