Processing

West Texas Gas experienced a mechanical failure at its Davis Plant, Questar said Friday. The unavailability of the processing plant for most of Friday’s gas day left Questar unable to deliver to TransColorado at the Greasewood delivery point, so Questar cut Greasewood nominations to elapsed pro rata levels in Cycle 3 Friday. Questar said Davis repairs were expected to be completed and nominations back to normal by Saturday’s gas day. The incident occurred on the heels of Questar announcing a March 7-11 maintenance outage at Davis Plant that would also have the effect of suspending deliveries to TransColorado (see Daily GPI, Feb. 25).

Sonat reported being informed that Enterprise Operating Partners LLC had experienced an unscheduled outage at its Toca 1 processing plant in southeast Louisiana, and the Toca 2 plant is currently unavailable due to scheduled maintenance. Based on the latest information received from Enterprise, Sonat said Tuesday, Toca 1 will return to service sometime Wednesday. The pipeline said its dehydration facilities were activated and it was blending the gas stream via storage withdrawals at TGP-Toca, but customers should expect to see a richer gas stream in the market area, primarily on the south system, over the next 48 to 96 hours. Because of the anticipated short duration of the plant outage and projected gas quality during that time, Sonat did not expect to issue a Hydrocarbon Dew Point Limitation Notice.

Fourth quarter completion of a new pipeline and three processing plants should expand production capacity in XTO Energy Inc.’s Freestone Trend by more than 60% to 730 MMcf/d, but the Fort Worth-based independent said estimated volumes will be lower than previous forecasts to reflect “ongoing curtailments imposed by third-party pipeline purchases.”

Southern Natural said it was notified that the Enterprise Processing Plant is being shut down. Southern also is shutting down its Toca Compressor Station and has declared a force majeure. Pressures declined to the point that Southern essentially has no gas flow through the Toca facility. Southern is requesting that all shippers/poolers verify that their supply is flowing and nominate their demand to match their anticipated supply. Southern is not accepting any nominations for interruptible services that rely on storage (ISS and Park withdrawals) and will not be accepting any makeup due shipper.

The Enterprise-operated Toca I Processing Plant work has been completed and the southeast Louisiana plant is back online, Sonat reported Sunday. As a result, the hydrocarbon dew point limitation and the Type 5 OFO implemented Aug. 1 in conjunction with the Toca outage (see Daily GPI, Aug. 3) were lifted immediately.

With IBM and other business processing giants weighing in, the energy industry, including the utility sector, increasingly is doing what other industries have been pushing for more than a decade — outsourcing generic business back-office functions with the goal of lowering payrolls and becoming more efficient as companies seek to survive in an ever-tougher business climate.

A National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) pre-filing process applied to natural gas pipeline projects has greatly accelerated the average permitting times to a year or less for what used to average more than two years, FERC Commissioner Suedeen Kelly told an industry audience in Santa Fe, NM, last Friday. The same process of regulatory staff and applicants sharing information before a formal filing was applied last year in the pending application by a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp. to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Long Beach Harbor.

The biggest mining and processing complex in the Alberta oilsands, stung by the sustained strength in natural gas prices, has set out to pare down its reliance on gas. Gas is burning up 20% of Syncrude Canada’s operating budget and the value of the natural gas has reached the point where manufacturing it from oilsands bitumen could pay off, COO Jim Carter said.

The biggest mining and processing complex in the Alberta oilsands, stung by the sustained strength in natural gas prices, has set out to pare down its reliance on gas. Gas is burning up 20% of Syncrude Canada’s operating budget and the value of the natural gas has reached the point where manufacturing it from oilsands bitumen could pay off, COO Jim Carter said.