Reminded

Pacific Gas and Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO on its California Gas Transmission system for Monday but said it would end it Tuesday.

New York state economic development and business interests — led by the Independent Oil & Gas Association (IOGA) of New York — last week reminded Gov. David A. Paterson in a letter that his draft energy plan includes expansion of natural gas exploration. Producers and others are pushing for adoption of new rules that would allow development of the Marcellus Shale gas play, while environmentalists are lobbying for stricter standards.

New York state economic development and business interests — led by the Independent Oil & Gas Association (IOGA) of New York — Tuesday reminded Gov. David A. Paterson in a letter that his draft energy plan includes expansion of natural gas exploration. Producers and others are pushing for adoption of new rules that would allow development of the Marcellus Shale gas play, while environmentalists are lobbying for stricter standards.

Florida Gas Transmission extended an Overage Alert Day through at least Friday but loosened the tolerance for negative daily imbalances from 20% to 25%.

Proving that it is unwise to say “never” when talking about commodity market price levels, traders were reminded of the valuable lesson Wednesday as February natural gas futures continued recording new lows and broke below $5 — a number that some traders and analysts thought would “never” be broken on this bear move. The prompt-month contract ended up putting in a $4.940 low before closing the regular session at $4.970, down 21.4 cents from Tuesday’s finish.

Columbia Gulf expects a sale of a portion of its offshore and onshore facilities to Tennessee (see Daily GPI, June 18) to be effective July 1. Columbia Gulf customers were reminded that offshore imbalances created on the Bluewater System, South Pass System and interconnecting offshore laterals should be resolved as soon as possible. Imbalance paybacks and drawdowns are available, the pipeline said.

Northwest reminded customers that the operator of the Jackson Prairie storage facility on its system will be conducting an annual bottom-hole pressure test Monday through Friday of next week, during which no injections or withdrawals will be available. Northwest said it will begin accepting withdrawal nominations for the Oct. 6 gas day, and injection nominations “will be accepted as space becomes available in the facility. In order for Northwest to maintain its storage account balance, it is critical that customers do not draft the system on the days leading up to the test.” The pipeline asked that customers stay on rate during the outage as it “will have very limited operational flexibility due to the Jackson Prairie test and the anomaly work being performed between the Muddy Creek and Kemmerer compressor stations.”

Northwest reminded customers of the potential for an OFO and/or Deficiency Period due to maintenance scheduled for June 5-7 in the mainline corridor between the Cisco and La Plata B compressor stations. See the bulletin board for a summary of the contracted, design and available capacity volumes during this outage for La Plata B (southbound), Moab Compressor Station (southbound) and Pleasant View Compressor Station (southbound). If Primary Firm nomination requests exceed the design capacity at these points during the outage, an OFO will be issued, Northwest said.

Columbia Gas reminded Firm Storage Service (FSS) customers of a section in their rate schedule requiring that account volumes on Feb. 1 not exceed 65% of the Storage Contract Quantity (SCQ). Additionally, the maximum inventory on April 1 shall not exceed 25% of SCQ, Columbia said, adding that failure to comply with the April 1 requirement may result in forfeiture of quantities above the 25% level.