Operational

After studying the financial and operational situations of 15major oil and gas producers, the international credit agency FitchIBCA recently published a report indicating the industry isrebounding from the financially depressed timeframe between 1998and early 1999, but new challenges are just around the corner.

Reliant is under a Critical Period operational alert due tosevere weather in the system’s market area. Effective today no SBSrate schedule storage withdrawals will be allowed until furthernotice.

Citing cold weather and operational conditions, MRT issued anOFO Wednesday. All IT and AOR (Authorized Overrun) volumes flowingnorth of the Glendale (AR) Station on the Main Line wereinterrupted. Affected customers should re-source their Main Linesupplies to the East Line or take their Main Line IT and/or AORreceipts to zero, MRT said.

MRT issued an OFO Tuesday due to anticipated cold weather andoperational conditions; the order will remain in effect today anduntil further notice. It is interrupting all IT volumes andAuthorized Overrun gas flowing on the mainline north of theGlendale, AR, Station. MRT will not allow underdelivery of gasduring this time but will continue to accept positive imbalancenominations.

Reliant told shippers Wednesday that an Operational Alert has been lifted, so imbalance tolerances are back to normal (see Daily GPI, Dec. 21). Reliant also said it now expects an outage of the electric unit at Buckley Compressor Station north of Shreveport, LA (see Daily GPI, Dec. 14) to last through the end of February 2000.

Citing anticipations of cold weather and operational conditions,MRT issued an OFO effective today until further notice. Thepipeline will interrupt all IT volumes and Authorized Overrun gasin excess of contract demand flowing north of the mainline’sGlendale (AR) Station. Firm customers must restrict mainlinevolumes to within their contracted zone entitlement and primarypath. MRT will have a zero tolerance for underdeliveries during theOFO but will continue to accept positive imbalance gas. The OFOsupersedes a System Protection Warning that took effect Wednesday(see Daily GPI, Dec. 15).

After six months of construction, the Thunder Creek Pipelinebecame operational earlier this month, Thunder Creek Gas Servicessaid. The 126-mile 450 MMcf/d trunkline system, which carries gasproduced from the Powder River Basin in Northeast Wyoming, begandelivering gas into the KN Interstate system on Sept.1.Construction of the line was completed last month. Thunder Creekalso has interconnects with the CIG system, Wyoming InterstateCo.’s proposed Medicine Bow Lateral and KN’s proposed Pathfinderline. The estimated cost of the Thunder Creek gathering trunkline,related compression and the processing plant is $100 million.Thunder Creek Gas Services is a joint venture between KN Energy andDevon Energy. Two other projects designed to transport gas from thebasin, the Fort Union Gathering project and the Northern Header GasGathering project, are still in construction. Fort Union GasGathering project, a 106-mile system, currently is being built by aconsortium of five companies. The Northern Header Gas Gatheringproject is a 256-mile system that would move up to 500 MMcf/d fromthe northeast end of the basin for CMS Oil & Gas and Pennaco.

Public Service Co. of Colorado and Cheyenne (WY) Light Fuel& Power will implement Operational Balancing Procedures in allareas effective Saturday and Sunday. The effect is to requireshippers to cut nominations to a level that does not exceedestimated daily consumption taken from a previous “Model Day” (inthis case July 4, 1999). Imbalance paybacks will not be allowedduring the OBP period.

Conoco plans to eliminate nearly a thousand positions in 1999due to low oil prices and a need to improve operational efficiency.The layoffs will result in a $50 million after-tax charge againstConoco’s fourth quarter earnings, the company announced Tuesday.Conoco also said it was reducing its 1999 capital budget by $500million to $1.8 billion.