Repairing

Citing welding delays in repairing a Saturday rupture west of Cheyenne Station (see Daily GPI, Nov. 14), Wyoming Interstate Co. said it was required to maintain a curtailment of mainline capacity through its Laramie East constraint point to zero through at least Wednesday. Flow through the Medicine Bow Lateral was not impacted, WIC said. “At this time, WIC anticipates that it will be able to accept nominations…Wednesday for its full Wyoming mainline capacity” in the Timely cycle for Thursday’s gas day, the pipeline said.

Gulf of Mexico producers and pipeline companies continued to make progress Tuesday repairing infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Ivan. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) said 22 companies reported that nine manned platforms and two rigs were still evacuated and 1,735.8 MMcf/d of gas and 453,092 bbl/d of oil were still shut in. Cumulative production shut-ins now stand at 67.861 Bcf of gas and 15.3 million bbl of oil.

El Paso said the necessary replacement parts for repairing mechanical damage to Flagstaff (AZ) Station’s Unit #1 (see Daily GPI, April 30) will not be available until mid-June, and thus it declared the outage a force majeure event. The incremental reduction of North Mainline capacity due to the Flagstaff outage is 100 MMcf/d, and other North Mainline maintenance previously scheduled during May is being reassessed in light of the Flagstaff situation. Previously posted capacity reductions will be revised as soon as possible. El Paso also said the Alamo Lake (AZ) Station’s #2 turbine was started Thursday but experienced a mechanical failure and must be disassembled to determine the extent of damage. Capacity of the Havasu Crossover was returned to 570 MMcf/d Friday until further notice.

Texas Eastern (Tetco) said Friday it is continuing work on repairing a leak on the M1 24-inch line at the discharge of Oran (MO) Compressor Station under the Mississippi River. The leak was discovered in late February (see Daily GPI, Feb. 24). A previously posted reduction to 70% of capacity at Oran is expected to continue through the end of this winter season, upon which Tetco anticipates a complete shutdown of the line to complete the repairs. The duration of this outage has not been determined, but is expected to be at least one month. Although initial restrictions will be limited to meters downstream of the Longview (TX) Compressor Station on the 24-inch line in zones East Texas and M1, “operating conditions may require restriction of ETX meters upstream of Longview from time to time,” the pipeline said.

While repairing an equipment failure at the Castle Valley CO2 Plant, Questar decided to inspect and repair additional equipment as a preventative measure. To facilitate the work, a plant outage originally scheduled for Feb. 11-12 will be extended through Feb. 13-14. The plant is expected to return to service at a reduced processing level of about 70,000 Dth/d for the Feb. 15 gas day. Because no processing will be available during the Feb. 11-14 period, Questar will work closely with upstream producers to maintain gas quality within tariff specifications. Equipment removed during the shutdown is scheduled for reinstallation during the last week of February, after which the plant is expected to return to normal service. No plant shutdown is required and no customer impact is expected during this installation, Questar said.

Questar is cutting about 25,000 Dth/d while repairing mechanicalproblems that began Tuesday afternoon on its No. 3 compressor atFidlar Station.