Divvying

Bidding for turned-back capacity on El Paso Natural Gas by full-requirements (FR) shippers will come to a close Friday, despite a last-minute plea by a group of FR shippers for FERC to postpone the deadline, and a challenge by California regulators and utilities to El Paso’s decision to give FR shippers preferential access to the capacity. The bidding is seen as a critical first step in the FERC-ordered plan to convert all of the FR shippers on El Paso to contract-demand (CD) service by Nov. 1 of this year, and end a years-long dispute over the disparate manner in which capacity has been allocated on the pipeline.