Condition

El Paso canceled Tuesday’s warning of a potential Strained Operating Condition Thursday, saying high-linepack conditions had improved.

After implementing a Strained Operating Condition (SOC) Friday, CIG has issued an OFO that will take effect Wednesday until further notice. The OFO was necessary to preserve system integrity and reliability, the pipeline said. As noted in the SOC posting, “CIG’s system is operating at an extremely high load factor. Further, CIG’s total storage inventories are currently at or near the operational field limits, including the largest field, Ft. Morgan, which is nearly at operational capacity. Because of these conditions, CIG does not have the ability to absorb imbalances caused by mismatches between scheduled receipts and deliveries or those arising from variations in actual gas flow relative to scheduled quantities. As stated in the SOC, capacity for interruptible storage injections is not available.” Conditions of the OFO include a requirement that interruptible storage customers withdraw the greater of 10% of current inventory or 5,000 Dth/d. See the bulletin board for other details.

Dominion declared an operational flow order on its PL-1 system for deliveries to Virginia and Maryland.

El Paso said conditions had improved sufficiently to allow it to end Thursday the Strained Operating Condition that was declared Tuesday. “Linepack has stabilized and maximum withdrawals from Washington Ranch storage facility are no longer required to support system operations,” the pipeline said.

El Paso tightened the tolerance for negative daily imbalances under a Strained Operating Condition (see Daily GPI, Jan. 17) from 10% to 5% Wednesday.

Saying the conditions that led to Wednesday’s issuance of a Strained Operating Condition had abated, CIG lifted the SOC and all accompanying conditions Friday.

CIG declared a Strained Operating Condition that took effect Wednesday until further notice. “In anticipation of the cold weather forecast to affect our market region combined with high firm transportation load factors, CIG is concerned that its ability to absorb imbalances caused by mismatches between scheduled receipts and deliveries and to accept imbalance payback nominations will be very limited,” the pipeline said, adding that it may implement performance caps at locations not operating at scheduled flow rates. In addition, high demand for authorized overrun storage withdrawals may require CIG to allocate capacity among requesting shippers, it said.

El Paso declared a systemwide Strained Operating Condition Sunday, effective until further notice, and set a 10% tolerance for positive daily imbalances. The pipeline said its Washington Ranch storage facility is unavailable for injections due to well testing.

Claiming that Equitrans is holding eastern Kentucky producers hostage to its pipeline system, the state’s attorney general has asked FERC to condition any certificate approving the company’s Big Sandy Pipeline project on Kentucky producers being granted open-access taps to take their gas off an affiliated gathering system for transportation on pipelines other than Equitrans.