Coincidentally

The average monthly bill of residential customers of natural gas utilities declined for a fourth consecutive year and — perhaps not coincidentally — customer satisfaction increased by seven points compared to last year, according to J.D. Power and Associates’ 2012 Gas Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study.

El Paso said that coincidentally with its June 24-28 annual maintenance shutdown of the Keystone Station, another unspecified pipeline that serves the same area experienced an unscheduled outage and “the combined effect on the Permian area has caused large volumes of gas to be shut in.” To help alleviate the situation, El Paso is forgoing some of the planned work at Keystone in order to return it to service ahead of schedule. The “A” plant became available Wednesday afternoon, and capacity through Keystone was raised to 600 MMcf/d effective with Thursday’s Cycle 2 nominations. Keystone’s “B” plant, which normally pumps gas south to the Waha Area, will not be available until Cycle 1 on Saturday. See the bulletin board for further details.