Repair

Sonat said Wednesday it had gotten regulatory approval for a planto repair the July 5 rupture in its 14-inch Romere Pass Line offshoresoutheastern Louisiana (see Daily GPI, July24). Barring unforeseen problems, the pipeline hopes to begin thework today.

Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson likened the powerindustry to an old jalopy in desperate need of repair yesterday atan energy conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the NationalEnergy Marketers Association. He expressed concern that Congresshas not been too interested in moving power restructuringlegislation and said if legislation isn’t completed soon there willbe dire consequences. “My main message is that unless there isrestructuring soon there are going to be power outages in thiscountry,” Richardson said.

An outage of the Sea Robin Plant will be extended by two days torepair unexpected damage found during combuster inspection. Thedamage was one part of the gas turbine and unrelated to thecombuster. The plant is expected to resume processing on or aboutApril 19.

As part of repair operations on its 100 Line #1 leak (see DailyGPI, Feb. 3), Tennessee has isolated andremoved from service sections of Lines #1 and #2. They are expected toremain out of service until Tuesday. Lines #3 and #4 remain inservice. The work is causing Tennessee to restrict through SecondaryServices meters (including the Zone 0 pool meter) upstream of Station40 (Natchitoches, LA).