Impacting

Due to high acid gas volumes at the inlet of Pine River Gas Plant impacting some shippers’ firm entitlement/production, Westcoast reduced the plant’s acid gas capacity volume Thursday morning to about 91.4 MMcf/d until further notice.

MRT said a System Protection Warning will take effect today,primarily impacting services north of the Glendale (AR) Station. Italso will limit firm volumes to their primary direction of flow.

If the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality slows downthe permit approval process for companies eager to begin coal bedmethane projects in the state, the largest producers already thereare expected to have no trouble meeting their drilling schedulesthrough at least the first quarter of 2001. Anticipating thehearings, many had already moved proposed drilling projects for2001 through the regulatory process.

If the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality slows downthe permit approval process for companies eager to begin coal bedmethane projects in the state, the largest producers already thereare expected to have no trouble meeting their drilling schedulesthrough at least the first quarter of 2001. Anticipating thehearings, many had already moved proposed drilling projects for2001 through the regulatory process.

El Paso said a shutdown of the Blanco (NM) Plant starting June 5represents the largest annual outage on its system, impacting about15% of normal total throughput. There will be zero flow throughBlanco for about four hours on June 5. Thereafter the IMOITRKA (BRValverde) point can flow at its normal rate, but the net reductionof San Juan Basin capacity for the day will be 600 MMcf/d. Duringthe June 5-9 period maintenance on Blanco’s C and D plants will cutSan Juan capacity by 500 MMcf/d. A June 5-14 outage of the Gallup(NM) Station essentially will have no additional impact whileBlanco is down, but will result in a 250 MMcf/d San Juan cutbackJune 10-14. Combined pipeline and compressor maintenance betweenthe Leupp and Flagstaff Stations in Arizona will reduce NorthMainline capacity by 500 MMcf/d June 5, 400 MMcf/d June 6 and 210MMcf/d June 7. See the El Paso bulletin board for details of othermaintenance planned during June.

Heavy merger activity is impacting the wholesale energymarketing segment, causing several of the top-20 marketers of 1998to exit the market, and spurring other companies to acquire assetsand start online trading, a new study has found.