Declare

Southern California Gas waited until early morning to declare a high-linepack OFO on the Intraday 1 nominations cycle for Thursday, setting the tolerance for positive daily imbalances at 10%. The OFO will be kept in place through at least Friday.

After warning earlier Monday that it might be required to declare a Strained Operating Condition (SOC) due to excessive drafting of its system, El Paso later followed through by declaring an SOC-Draft to become effect Tuesday for eight specified locations. El Paso initially set the tolerance for negative daily imbalances at 10% but said it “will reduce the imbalance tolerance if conditions do not sufficiently improve. A combination of receipt underperformance and takes in excess of scheduled quantities has resulted in a substantial loss of linepack on [the El Paso] system over the past weekend with linepack at approximately 7,200 MMcf. Washington Ranch [storage facility] is on withdrawal at maximum rate.”

Both of California’s two biggest distributors waited until Friday afternoon to declare high-linepack OFOs for Saturday. After issuing a stringent Stage 3 OFO earlier in the week, Pacific Gas & Electric made the latest one more lenient at Stage 2, with $1/Dth penalties for exceeding a 16% tolerance on positive daily imbalances. Southern California Gas said it will assess Buy-Back charges in accordance with its rules and tariffs to those exceeding a 10% tolerance.

Southern California Gas waited until early Wednesday to declare a high-linepack OFO on the Intraday 1 nominations cycle for Wednesday’s gas day. The OFO was kept in place through at least Thursday. Buy-Back charges in accordance with SoCalGas rules and tariffs will be assessed to customers who deliver more than 110% of their actual gas usage into the distributor’s system on the OFO day.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a systemwide high-inventory OFO beyond Saturday.

A day after cautioning that it might need to declare an Underage Alert Day Tuesday due to high linepack and soft market-area demand (see Daily GPI, June 20), conditions apparently had changed enough that Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day instead, citing forecasts of 90-degree weather in Florida. The OAD carried 25% tolerance for negative daily imbalances.

Public Utility District (PUD) No. 1 of Snohomish County, WA, has asked FERC to exercise its exclusive jurisdiction and declare Enron Power Marketing Inc.’s claim for a “termination payment” of $117 million invalid.

Due to warmer than expected weather in its market area, CIG plans to declare a Strained Operating Condition on its transmission system effective Tuesday until further notice. “Because of currently high storage inventory levels and reduced market requirements generally experienced with warmer weather conditions, CIG has limited ability to handle oversupply or underdelivery imbalances,” the pipeline said. “In particular, all storage customers should adjust flowing supplies to ensure that storage injections and total inventory levels remain at or below contractual limits.”

Due to warmer than expected weather in its market area, CIG plans to declare a Strained Operating Condition on its transmission system effective Tuesday until further notice. “Because of currently high storage inventory levels and reduced market requirements generally experienced with warmer weather conditions, CIG has limited ability to handle oversupply or underdelivery imbalances,” the pipeline said. “In particular, all storage customers should adjust flowing supplies to ensure that storage injections and total inventory levels remain at or below contractual limits.”