High

Avista Corp., based in Spokane, WA, got on board the technologystock express last week as Washington state neighbor, Bill Gatestook a 5% stake in the company and Avista’s stock price just aboutdoubled.

Avista Corp., based in Spokane, WA, got on board the technologystock express last week as Washington state neighbor Bill Gatestook a 5% stake in the company and Avista’s stock price just aboutdoubled.

Texas Eastern (Tetco) said Friday its delivery pressures haddropped below contractual levels due to cold weather and highmarket-area takes. Thus it issued an OFO, effective at 1 p.m. CTthat afternoon, requiring that all deliveries in its M-3 zone underall rate schedules be made at a uniform hourly rate. All M-3Operational Balancing Agreements were suspended for purposes ofhourly allocations only during the OFO period, the pipeline said.Penalties for non-compliance with the OFO were $25/dth. However,late Friday afternoon Tetco said the OFO was being suspended at 9a.m. Saturday because of forecasts of a “slight” warming trend.

Santa Fe Snyder Corp. of Houston is high grading its asset basethrough a series of deals. The largest component of the company’sstrategic repositioning is the $160 million purchase of additionaldeepwater Gulf of Mexico interests from Marathon Oil. Santa Febought an additional 33% interest in the Angus/Manatee six-blockcomplex, bringing the total working interest in the Shell operatedfields to 49%. The deal closed Jan. 7. The company said it is alsodisposing of low-profit assets.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFObeyond Friday.

The proposed Buccaneer Pipeline, which is seeking approval as anoptional-certificate project, should be held to the same highstandards as are other major pipeline projects under FERC’s newpolicy statement, says Florida Gas Transmission (FGT).

Pacific Gas & Electric issued a high-inventory OFO for todaywith $1/dth penalties for positive daily imbalances exceeding a 5%tolerance.

Florida Gas Transmission postponed until further notice thereplacement of 120 feet of 36-inch pipe under High 331 betweenStations 12 and 13 in the Florida Panhandle, and also canceled theassociated Overage Alert Day east of Station 12. The project had beenscheduled for Thanksgiving Day (see Daily GPI, Nov. 16). FGT still planned to take Station14 down to tie in additional facilities but delayed the start date byone day to Saturday (Nov. 27). That outage is expected to lastthrough Dec. 1 and limits market area deliveries to about 1.3Bcf/d. However, FGT removed the Overage Alert Day notice that waspreviously posted for the work.

Anticipating that high system linepack will continue through theweekend due to low gas demand and limited storage injectioncapability, Tennessee Tuesday issued an OFO Action Alert to takeeffect with Thursday’s gas day. Customers under Rate Schedules SA,LMS-PA, LMS-MA and transportation contracts not covered by abalancing agreement must keep deliveries into the system less thanor equal to scheduled quantities plus 2% (or 500 dekatherms,whichever is greater); takes from the system must be more than orequal to scheduled quantities minus 2% or 500 dekatherms. Tennesseeexpects the alert to remain in effect into the start of next week.