Mechanical

Northern Natural Gas canceled Wednesday a force majeure declaration related to a mechanical problem with the #26 engine at its Palmyra (NE) Compressor Station (see Daily GPI, Jan. 26). “Operations personnel working through the night returned the engine to service,” the pipeline said. Also, the Demarc allocation that had been implemented for Wednesday’s gas day was lifted beginning with the non-grid process, it added.

Flagstaff (AZ) Station’s #1 compressor has suffered mechanical damage, making the station inoperable until further notice because the necessary replacement parts have not been located yet, El Paso said. Reductions of North Mainline capacity due to the Flagstaff outage coupled with other maintenance that is ongoing or planned through May 14 will fluctuate between 125 MMcf/d and 215 MMcf/d. See the bulletin board for details.

Questar reported experiencing a mechanical failure of unit #5 at its Clay Basin storage facility Sunday evening, and as a result, injection capacity was reduced by 20,000 Dth/d to 350,000 Dth/d for Tuesday’s gas day. The restriction will continue until repairs are completed.

The two units at Trailblazer’s Compressor Station 602 in Lincoln County, CO remained out of service Thursday until further notice due to “a sudden mechanical/electrical failure.” Trailblazer has declared force majeure and said the completion date of repairs remains unknown. ITS/AOR and Secondary out-of-path transportation through the station are not available for scheduling. Primary and Secondary in-the-path firm nominated volumes will be prorated based on the shipper’s contract MDQ (Maximum Daily Quantity), the pipeline said.

Questar said Friday it had experienced mechanical failure on a compressor at the Oak Springs Station. Nominations through Saturday there were reduced to 175,000 Dth/d, which is the level that can be physically delivered to Kern River-Goshen (formerly Elberta; see Daily GPI, May 1), Questar said. It was not known Friday how long the unit would be down for repair.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFO beyond Saturday.

Effective today until further notice, Columbia Gas is reducing non-firm capacity to zero on the KA-1 Line in Estill County, KY, due to mechanical problems at Station Camp Compressor. About 8,000-10,000 Dth/d at Appalachian meters located on KA-1 and the Delta Natural Gas and CNR pipelines is affected, a spokeswoman said.

Questar experienced a mechanical failure Thursday in Unit #7 atits Clay Basin storage facility. Barring unexpected complications,repairs should be complete by today and the unit available forservice again on Tuesday’s gas day, the pipeline said. Injectioncapacity has been reduced to 235,000 Dth/d during the outage.Allocation of injection capacity was expected to occur each day,with the impact determined by customer nominations. However, thereis no impact on withdrawal nominations, Questar said.

After being delayed by environmental and mechanical hang-ups,Nevada’s first gas-fired merchant power plant, El Dorado, located40 miles southeast of Las Vegas got up and running over the weekendand officially opens May 4, according to Reliant Energy, one of thejoint venture partners in the project. It is a $280 million, 480 MWcombined-cycle plant, co-owned by Sempra Energy.