River

Ultra Petroleum commenced in-fill drilling this week in theJonah Field, located in the Green River Basin of Wyoming. It gotthe go-ahead to start drilling on June 8 when the Bureau of LandManagement released an order for 22 new well locations, whichshould keep Ultra busy through 2001.

Kern River is accepting bids through this afternoon in an openseason for summer firm capacity from May 1 through Nov. 30. Theavailable space will vary by month, ranging from lows of 25 MMcf/din August and November to a high of 53 MMcf/d in May. The pipelinewill consider fixed-price and indexed bids. Call Jeff Leishman at(801) 584-6682 or Dave Stevens at -7101 for more information.

Effective today, Kern River will lift all restrictions on firmservice that had resulted from this week’s Muddy Creek maintenance.IT service will resume as scheduled Saturday.

Westcoast notified shippers Wednesday that a force majeureoccurrence knocking out all processing capacity at its Pine RiverPlant had been resolved and processing was back to normal. Theplant experienced a total PLC (programmable logic controller)failure Monday afternoon, but the problem was fixed Tuesdayevening, Westcoast said.

Westcoast ended a force majeure late Wednesday at the Pine RiverPlant (see Daily GPI, Jan. 13) that hadcaused the curtailment of about 45 MMcf/d. A minor outage at thesmaller Highway Plant also has been resolved, Westcoast said Thursday.

Conoco Global Power, Conoco’s power subsidiary, announced plansto build a $250 million, 420 MW cogeneration plant at Dupont’sSabine River Works facility near Orange, TX. Conoco also announceda 10-year tolling agreement with PG&E Energy Trading in whichthe San Francisco-based company will provide the 80-90 MMcf/d ofgas for the plant while gaining the right to dispatch up to 250 MWof the project’s output. The value of the tolling agreement was notdisclosed. Conoco will be the project manager during construction,then give way to Dupont, which will operate the facility when it isfinished. Commercial operations are scheduled to begin in 2001.”This is the largest agreement of this kind PG&E Energy Tradinghas in Texas. What’s more, this energy will be sold into theEntergy power grid, making it even more valuable,” said TonyChovanec, vice president of PG&E Energy Trading’s marketingoperations.

In a draft order the FERC approved Northwest Pipeline’s mainlineexpansion plans in the Columbia River Gorge area of WashingtonState. The expansion will add 10,870 horsepower of compression atthree existing stations, increasing mainline capacity by 50,000Dth/d between the Stanfield, OR, meter station, where Northwestinterconnects with PG&E Gas Transmission-Northwest, andNorthwest’s interconnect with Sumas International Pipeline (SIPI)near Sumas, WA. (Dockets CP98-554-000 and CP98-554-001)

Caught in the midst of heated criticism of FERC’s proposedauction mechanism, Mississippi River Transmission (MRT) isdefending its proposed new auction procedures from attack bymarketers and producers.

Amid the fiery criticism of FERC’s proposed auction mechanism,Mississippi River Transmission (MRT) is suffering a similar fate asits proposed tariff revisions for implementing auction procedureshave come under attack from marketers and producers.