Evening

Citing “an ongoing gas quality issue” at the Enterprise Meeker receipt point, Rockies Express (REX) said that effective with Evening cycle nominations for Thursday’s gas day until further notice, nominations at the point are being scheduled to zero. Even though gas flow was interrupted on the gas days of Tuesday and Wednesday, the pipeline said, customers were not impacted as REX was able to utilize linepack to make deliveries. In an update Wednesday, REX said purging and packing operations are nearly complete on Spread 4, and it expected to commence purging and packing operations this week on the rest of the system up to the ANR delivery point, subject to the receipt of required regulatory approvals. “Based upon this schedule, Rockies Express anticipates providing interim service to the ANR delivery point and points upstream” on or about Jan. 5, depending upon weather conditions, continued progress during the commissioning process and receipt of all final regulatory approvals. Currently, service from the WIC receipt point and from the Echo Springs plant is still anticipated to be as late as Jan. 12. All other receipt and delivery points on the REX system upstream of the ANR delivery point are expected to be placed into service at the same time as the mainline system. Nominations of REX’s Overthrust capacity will be accepted effective Jan. 1 for service to Zone 1 delivery points and to Cheyenne HUB. REX continues to expect that full service on its system to Panhandle Eastern in Audrain County, MO, will be available in early February.

Spring officially began Tuesday evening, and despite a warming trend in the Midwest along with generally moderate weather already occupying the South, cash prices rose at a large majority of points that day. Several Rockies points spiked by dollar-plus amounts in rebounding from big plunges Monday, while most of the small losses were concentrated in Appalachia and at Northeast citygates.

SoCalGas declared an operational flow order (OFO) during the evening cycle for Thursday’s gas day. SoCalGas said it will limit all nominations to the Transportation Service Access Quantity (TSAQ) in the fourth operating cycle for the above date. When injection capacity falls below 850 MMcf/d, confirmations of firm storage injection nominations will be reduced. Customers must ensure that all deliveries into the SoCalGas system are within 110% of expected usage.

Severe thunderstorms knocked out multiple natural gas processing plants near Empress, AB, on Tuesday evening, affecting several Bcf/d of processing capacity and significant production of ethane, propane and other gas liquids. TransCanada PipeLines said six processing plants and related operations lost power and suffered some damage, including plants owned by ConocoPhillips, EnCana, Atco, Inter Pipeline and BP Canada. No injuries were reported in any of the outages.

In a move that drew widespread local news media attention, the Long Beach, CA, City Council Tuesday evening at the last minute postponed until late next month a decision on whether to break off two years of negotiations on behalf of its municipal energy department with the sponsors of a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in its harbor.

Southern California Gas declared an OFO for Friday’s Evening Cycle due to high linepack. Customers must ensure that all deliveries into the SoCalGas system are within 110% of expected usage. The giant LDC will assess Buy-Back charges to those customers who overdeliver.

In addition to a high-linepack OFO for Friday’s Evening Cycle nominations, Southern California Gas declared an additional OFO for the Timely Cycle on Saturday.

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.

Southern California Gas issued a high-linepack OFO for Friday’s Evening Cycle nominations, but did not have one in effect for Saturday’s gas day. The OFO carried a 10% tolerance for positive imbalances.