Problem

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) assured Washington state regulators last week it is fixing a natural gas utility back-billing problem that in extreme cases had customers billed for services done as many as six years ago. The flap arose in recent weeks when customers who were under-billed or not billed at all for certain past periods began receiving back-billings, some totaling thousands of dollars.

The BP America oil pipeline problem in Alaska that caused the partial shutdown of the largest oil field in the U.S. will put pipeline safety front and center when Congress returns from its hiatus next week, but it’s not expected to have a spill-over effect on natural gas pipelines, said an official with a major interstate gas pipeline group.

A congestion study slated to be completed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) before the end of the summer will identify a “watch list” of perhaps 25 to 30 electric transmission “problem areas” and a smaller subset list of those areas “where transmission needs are so large and acute that it is in the national interest to seek near-term solutions,” said Kevin Kolevar, director of the DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, last week.

Most consumers pick up a gas pump nozzle about once a week, but they never see a drillbit. That’s a problem if you’re an energy company holding a bag of money during a period of near-record natural gas, oil and gasoline prices.

Citing an electrical problem at the Hastings Extraction Plant, Dominion said it was required to take most of its wet gas system out of service immediately Wednesday. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the outage is expected to last two days, it added. Dominion said it had made arrangements to move some of the wet gas off system to Equitrans. Production physically located in the 3401, 3402, 3403, 3404, 3405, 3406, 3407, 3408, 3409 bubbles behind Camden Station and bubbles 3304, 3305 and 3303 behind Kennedy Station may stay online during this outage, Dominion said, while pool operators must shut in all other gas in the wet system.

El Paso took Belen Station’s #1 turbine down Tuesday to investigate a problem with the oil pump. The unit will remain down Wednesday. Previously scheduled work at Caprock Station will also occur Wednesday. The ongoing force majeure outage of Belen’s #2 unit will continue through Feb. 15, El Paso said. Capacity of the San Juan Crossover will be reduced by 35 MMcf/d from a base capacity of 650 MMcf/d Wednesday through Feb. 15.

With power off, land lines down and cellular phone towers demolished, communication continued to be a major problem for oil and natural gas companies trying to assess damage onshore and offshore from Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday.

A gas quality problem has been discovered at the Southern Star-Ford receipt point in Ford County, KS, NGPL said. Effective Thursday until further notice, NGPL will not schedule transportation from the point.

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.