Juan

El Paso will have the “B” Plant at Williams (AZ) Station downfor maintenance June 21-23, reduing North Mainline capacity in SanJuan Basin by 100 MMcf/d. From June 28 through July 7, individualWilliams “B” compressors will be off-line, cutting North Mainlinecapacity by 25 MMcf/d June 28-July 2 and by 40 MMcf/d July 3-7.

A 270 MMcf/d reduction in San Juan Basin supply persisted intothe weekend-and possibly beyond-as El Paso reported it had founddamage to internal rotating components in its Blanco Plant’s “D”turbine that would require removal and inspection. The plant hadbeen scheduled to resume full operation Thursday. If the parts canbe repaired and reused, the turbine should return to service May31, El Paso said. But if the parts must be replaced, the projectedreturn date is June 5.

April 26-30 turbine modification at Transwestern’s BloomfieldStation on the San Juan Lateral will cut 25,000 MMBtu/d of Ignacio(CO) to Blanco (NM) capacity.

El Paso estimates one of the two compressor units at its Caprock(NM) Station will return to service by April 16, raising San JuanCrossover capacity to 600 MMcf/d from its current 580 MMcf/d. Itappears the other unit will remain unavailable until mid-May, thepipeline said.

El Paso Natural Gas has given up on its first attempt tode-bottleneck the constrained Bondad System in the San Juan Basin(see Daily GPI, Oct. 19), but is approaching FERC again in hopesthat a second try will be more fruitful in adding capacity to apoint that some gas traders sarcastically call “Bondage.”

While power generation demand and constraints on El Paso in theSan Juan Basin kept Western and Rockies prices afloat, general lackof trading activity kept most other markets flat to down a coupleof cents.

El Paso continued a 30 MMcf/d allocation of the San JuanCrossover through today due to unforeseen problems extendingmaintenance on the Laguna Station (Cibola County, NM) #3compressor. El Paso also postponed maintenance on the WendenStation (La Paz County, AZ) “A” turbine, which had been scheduledearlier this week, to March 16-18 to coincide with a total shutdownof the station March 17. Havasu Crossover capacity will be cut by80 MMcf/d on March 16 and 18 and by 150 MMcf/d on March 17.