Leak

Weather is delaying leak repairs on the South Pass 77 527A-700 line, Tennessee said Wednesday, and it now expects to complete the first portion of the work Saturday. Last week Tennessee had anticipated being able to finish Wednesday (see Daily GPI, April 26). The South Pass 77A meter remains shut in during the project. It also will be required to shut in during additional work on the line that is scheduled for Sept. 19-26.

Tennessee reported identifying a leak on the 500-1 line at valve 526-1A, and effective Sunday morning had required two Lake Washington Dehydration meters (#010555 and #101596) to shut in until further notice. Shippers accessing those meters were allowed to keep nominations in place for Monday’s gas day, but were required to reduce their nominations to zero for Tuesday’s Timely Cycle nominations. The pipeline declared a force majeure in conjunction with the event.

Tennessee declared a force majeure event Friday afternoon for meters on its 524C-600 Line due to a leak. The South Timbalier 54 meter offshore Louisiana was shut in for the duration of repairs, which was undetermined at that point.

Operator Northern Natural Gas declared force majeure after detecting a leak in the 20-inch mainline of Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS) near the platform at Mustang Island 787. Offshore maintenance crews were responding, NNG said in a bulletin board posting late Thursday afternoon, and the Mustang Island 782, 785, 787, 803 and A-16 receipt points were to be shut in sometime during Friday’s gas day. Duration of the outage has not yet been determined, it said.

Shell’s Mars platform in the Gulf of Mexico was shut down Saturday after a “sheen [of oil] was observed on the water,” a Shell spokeswoman said. At the time of the shut-in, Mars was producing 150,000 b/d of oil and 170 MMcf/d of gas.

A leak near Ship Shoal 145B has been isolated and no impact to production was expected, Tennessee said Wednesday.

Tennessee said Monday it was in the process of isolating the section of pipeline following discovery of a leak in the vicinity of South Pass 38. It estimated that repairs would “take a minimum of two weeks.” The South Pass 38, 39, 45 and 47 meters are affected.

Florida Gas Transmission said Friday morning it had completed repairs of a pinhole leak on the 22-inch mainline downstream of Station 4 in Galveston County, TX (see Daily GPI, March 7). The pipeline resumes scheduling up to normal capacity through Station 4 for Friday’s gas day.

Tennessee reported Wednesday it had discovered a pinhole leak in a valve on its East Cameron 49B compressor platform. While repairs are made Thursday through Sunday, physical receipts will be suspended at 13 upstream meters. Other meters will experience higher than normal pipeline pressure.