Offshore

Tennessee delayed a project to abandon certain facilities associated with Line 527A-300 offshore Louisiana until April 28-May 13. The work previously had been scheduled for April 23-May 8 (see Daily GPI, April 10).

Effective April 1, total nominations at receipt points on its 26-inch Main Pass Line offshore southeast Louisiana increased significantly, Sonat said. Also, it began scheduled maintenance at compressor stations in the production area, and as a result, some interruptible nominations (“A-1” and or “IT”) are not being accepted due to capacity constraints. In addition, several receipt points on the Main Pass Line have been identified at which actual flows are exceeding scheduled flows, the pipeline said. It encouraged all shippers on the line to check scheduled quantities to determine how much of their interruptible receipt nominations were accepted, and asked operators not to overdeliver into the system in order to avoid implementation of a Type 5 OFO.

Dallas-based Denbury Resources Inc. estimated that its discovery well in North Padre Island Block A-9 offshore Texas in the Gulf of Mexico has total potential natural gas reserves of 90 Bcf (34 Bcf net to Denbury).

As of Thursday afternoon Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System had not announced any shut-ins resulting from its pigging operation this week (see Daily GPI, Dec. 10). However, it has scheduled similar pig runs from the Mustang Island 758 platform to the onshore Tivoli (TX) Station for Jan. 6-10 and Jan. 21-24, and in each case advised shippers that shut-ins will be needed if liquids volumes are too great to be handled at Tivoli.

Piping on the Bay Marchand 5 platform offshore southeastern Louisiana was damaged during Hurricane Lili, Tennessee said. A jackup rig is scheduled to be on site Dec. 18 to perform repairs that are expected to last eight days. Physical flow will be suspended Dec. 18-25 at the following meters: Bay Marchand 24, Grand Isle 47, South Timbalier 22, Grand Isle 48J, South Timbalier 54/55E, and South Timbalier 23. A second Bay Marchand meter will be affected, but its block number was not identified.

Due to a scheduled pig run late last week resulting in “very high liquid levels” on the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System, scheduled volumes from MOPS into interconnects with Florida Gas Transmission, Gulf South and Tejas Gas Pipeline remained at zero Monday until further notice (see Daily GPI, Nov. 11).

A pigging operation on Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System from Wednesday evening through Friday resulted in very high liquid levels, and thus scheduled volumes from MOPS were reduced to zero for the gas days of Friday through Sunday. The action cut deliveries of about 100,000 MMBtu/d into South Texas interconnects with Florida Gas Transmission, Gulf South and Tejas Gas Pipeline, MOPS operator Northern Natural Gas said.

Special charges related to discontinuing exploration in Pakistan and on Block 19 offshore Angola ($76 million), along with the cost of repurchasing higher-cost debt ($7.6 million) resulted in a third quarter net loss of $0.9 million or $0.01/share for Ocean Energy compared to net income of $48 million or $0.27/share in 3Q2001. Without the impact of special items, the company reported net income of $56 million or $0.31/share.

Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System completed a pigging operation that caused a shutdown of the pipeline last week due to excess liquids (see Daily GPI, Oct. 23). The outage affected flows of about 115 MMcf/d. MOPS delivery nominations were being accepted again Friday for intraday scheduling.