Flows

A fire that closed Williams Partners LP’s Ignacio gas processing plant near Durango, CO, midweek will reduce expected cash flows by $10-20 million, primarily in 4Q2007, the company said. The range includes the expected mitigating effect of Williams Partners’ property damage and business interruption insurance. Williams Partners said it does not expect the reduction in cash flow to impact its regular quarterly cash distributions. The fire began in a cooling tower, damaging it and a few adjacent buildings before being extinguished. No injuries were reported. The Ignacio plant is part of Williams Four Corners LLC, which is owned by Williams Partners. Approximately 100 MMcfe/d of the plant’s normal 450 MMcfe/d production capacity has been rerouted to other facilities in the San Juan Basin. In addition to the Ignacio plant, the Four Corners gathering system is connected to the Kutz and Lybrook gas processing plants and the Milagro and Esperanza gas treating plants in northwestern New Mexico. The Four Corners system’s normal volumes exceed 1.5 Bcfe/d. The cause of the fire is unknown and is under investigation.

Mixed price movement was back in vogue Wednesday in trading for first-of-November flows. Market-area weather trends tended to dictate where gains or losses occurred in some cases, but there were also some anomalies. The cash market continued to have a little prior-day screen support from Tuesday’s 4.7-cent advance by December futures.

Cheyenne Plains took system flows to zero Monday after experiencing a “facility outage” at Cheyenne Plains Compressor Station during the weekend. It is not accepting nominations for deliveries to either CIG or Wyoming Interstate Co. until further notice.

Record cash flows pushed deal activity in the oil and gas industry to levels rivaling the mega merger highs of 1998, according to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Gas deals dominated the list of the largest transactions in 2006, with six out of the eight upstream deals in the top 10 deal list. This was in contrast to the previous year when only two deals in the top 10 of all deals and four of the top 10 of upstream deals were gas-dominated.

Record cash flows pushed deal activity in the oil and gas industry to levels rivaling the mega merger highs of 1998, according to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Gas deals dominated the list of the largest transactions in 2006, with six out of the eight upstream deals in the top 10 deal list. This was in contrast to the previous year when only two deals in the top 10 of all deals and four of the top 10 of upstream deals were gas-dominated.

Flows were allowed to resume at three meters Thursday after Tennessee lifted the force majeure that had been declared a week earlier for the West Delta 527A-300 Line due to a leak (see Daily GPI, April 16).

Columbia Gulf reported Thursday it had completed repairs on the 26-inch diameter Eugene Island System and allowed three platforms to resume flows effective with the Intraday 2 nominations cycle. Columbia Gulf also reduced its estimate of the amount of production shut in due to a leak on Line 100 of the West Leg of the Bluewater System to 12,000 Dth/d (see Daily GPI, Nov. 1). It said degassing operations would commence later Thursday and continue until the line pressure is reduced to a level that permits divers to enter the water safely. Depending on weather conditions, divers may be permitted in the water as early as Monday, and depending on the extent of the leak, operations could return to normal as soon as Wednesday, Columbia Gulf said.

In Tuesday’s trading for flows on the first day of November, prices were down by double-digit amounts at all points. Seasonal temperatures in many areas and a prior-day screen drop of 41.1 cents were primarily responsible for the bearish cash market.

Shell Exploration & Production Co. reported it has resumed partial production flows from its Mars Tension Leg Platform (TLP), the largest producing platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform was shut-in due to damage from Hurricane Katrina last August.