Force

Williams declared force majeure Tuesday following a compressorunit failure at Ogallah (KS) Station, saying it had to reduce LineSegment 490 capacity by about 10,000 Dth/d. It anticipated repairswould take three to four days.

Sonat lifted Saturday an OFO Type 1 and force majeure associatedwith a shut-in test of its Bear Creek (LA) Storage Facility. BearCreek’s injection/withdrawal capacity was restored to 100%.

Transwestern declared force majeure at the Bloomfield (NM)Compressor Station after the #4 unit went down over the weekend.Repair downtime is uncertain pending the availability of parts, thepipeline said, but it hoped to have the unit back in serviceFriday. The outage reduces normal San Juan Lateral capacity of850,000 MMBtu/d to about 580,000 MMBtu/d today and about 800,000MMBtu/d Thursday.

Northern Natural Gas declared a force majeure after discoveringa leak in its 20-inch Plymouth to Mitchell line in the PermianBasin area of West Texas. Teams isolated the leak, NNG saidWednesday, and the approximate downtime was expected to be twodays. Flow was scheduled to zero at the Shell Tippett, Burlington,Marathon Yates and Southern Union receipt points.

ANR declared a force majeure when its 16-inch Marinette Lineruptured Wednesday afternoon between mainline valves Nos. 4 and 5in Oconto County, WI. Preliminary indications pointed tothird-party damage as the apparent cause of the rupture, ANR said.Repairs were completed Thursday.

Due to a compressor failure at its Riner Station, Williamsdeclared a force majeure situation on Line Segments 490 and 491.Necessary repairs are expected to be completed by next Monday’s gasday. Since capacity in the two segments has been reduced,maintenance originally scheduled for the week of Aug. 21 at theCheyenne and Ogallah Stations will be done this week to minimizedisruptions during August, Williams said.

The chairman of the gas demand task force of the NationalPetroleum Council (NPC) said last week his projections of a 30 Tcfmarket by 2010 in the December NPC study on natural gas “might havegrossly underestimated inherent demand.” The growth of gas firedpower generation has caught everyone by surprise and could have theunexpected effect of causing net gas withdrawals from storageduring the summertime as early as next year, said Matthew R.Simmons, president of Simmons & Company International.

The chairman of the gas demand task force of the NationalPetroleum Council (NPC) said yesterday his projections of a 30 Tcfmarket by 2010 in the December NPC study on natural gas “might havegrossly underestimated inherent demand.” The growth of gas firedpower generation has caught everyone by surprise and could have theunexpected effect of causing net gas withdrawals from storageduring the summertime as early as next year, said Matthew R.Simmons, president of Simmons & Company International.

President Clinton’s decision yesterday ordering the Departmentof Energy to trade crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reservefor two million barrels of heating oil stored in the Northeast asprotection against fuel shortages this winter may not be enough tocalm down Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY).