Initiated

Effective with Cycle 4 nominations Tuesday, El Paso lifted an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty notice that had been initiated Sunday.

Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day notice initiated Wednesday in effect through at least Thursday, but loosened the tolerance for negative daily imbalances from 15% to 25%. FGT said it has begun unscheduled maintenance on one of the two compressor units at the FGT/Tennessee Gas Carnes interconnect. The pipeline reduced Carnes capacity to 30,000 MMBtu/d starting with the Evening Cycle nominations for Friday, but later Thursday said operational conditions allowed flow above that level. “Even with horsepower unavailable, pressures are currently allowing for flow at near maximum capacities (60,000 MMBtu/d); thus, FGT will schedule volumes up to 60,000 MMBtu for the gas day of 08/13/04. For the gas day of 08/14/04, FGT will evaluate the operational/flow conditions to determine what volumes can be scheduled at this point, it said. Current estimates indicate that the unit will be down for two weeks.

Florida Gas Transmission initiated a new Overage Alert Day notice Tuesday with 25% tolerance for negative daily imbalances. The previous OAD had expired Sunday.

Florida Gas Transmission ended Tuesday an Overage Alert Day notice that was initiated last Thursday. However, FGT said Tuesday afternoon it had been notified by Gulf South that unscheduled maintenance was necessary early Wednesday morning on the Gulf South/ Florida Gas Mobile Bay Lateral, affecting seven meters. Thus, FGT was not confirming any scheduled volumes on the lateral for Wednesday’s gas day. That factor and forecasts of another cold front moving into northern Florida by the end of the week prompted the pipeline to warn that it “may issue an Overage Alert Day on one of the upcoming gas days to ensure that FGT’s linepack does not drop to lower levels.”

Aquila Inc. on Thursday said that it has initiated steps to terminate an agreement to sell its 79.9% interest in Aquila Sterling Ltd., the owner of Midlands Electricity plc, to a subsidiary of Scottish and Southern Energy plc.

Columbia Gas said Thursday a Critical Day designation for Market Area 34 in southeastern Virginia, initiated Sunday, will remain in place Friday through Sunday and will also be applied to storage injections. Based on forecasted markets, available facilities and capacity utilization, there is still no non-firm capacity available to Market Area 34, the pipeline said. In addition, it projects that no excess injection capacity will be available for non-firm storage services, thus ruling out MDIQ overruns, SIT injections, imbalance paybacks and ISS injections.

Columbia Gas extended a Critical Day designation for Market Area 34 in southeastern Virginia, initiated on Sunday (see Daily GPI, Sept. 2), through at least Thursday.

The Senate leadership on Thursday was considering a Democratic-initiated proposal to substitute last year’s energy bill — which passed the Senate by a vote of 88-11 in April 2002 — for the current energy bill and pass it before leaving for the August recess (see Daily GPI, April 26, 2002).

Northern Natural Gas has initiated a new rate case directed at increasing revenues by $55 million and changing its methods of operation to better fit in with the competitive market (RP03-398).