Shippers

Vacant capacity on TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. will rise to about1.7 Bcf/d, or 24% of total capacity, by Nov. 1 as shippers ofCanadian gas production turn to transportation alternatives comingavailable to them for the first time in industry history.

At the request of potential new shippers, Petal Gas StorageL.L.C. has extended by three weeks its open season to determinewhether there’s enough market demand for further expansion of itstwo storage caverns in Mississippi.

TransCanada advised shippers Friday that due to forecasts ofwarmer than normal weather in the Eastern Delivery Area, diversionsand IT to the South West Delivery Area might be curtailed over theweekend and possibly into this week, depending on marketconditions. Diversions from Niagara and Chippewa would be excluded,the pipeline said.

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.

Affiliated pipelines Texas Eastern and Algonquin notified shippersTuesday evening that OFOs (or a Critical System Warning in Algonquin’scase) similar to those canceled Monday (see Daily GPI, Jan. 25) would go into effect later thatnight. As before, the OFOs require uniform hourly deliveries in themarket area and carry other restrictions such as no acceptance ofdue-shipper imbalance nominations. Effective today Algonquin isallowing only Primary Firm services through its Cromwell (CT)Compressor Station.

Reliant told shippers Wednesday that an Operational Alert has been lifted, so imbalance tolerances are back to normal (see Daily GPI, Dec. 21). Reliant also said it now expects an outage of the electric unit at Buckley Compressor Station north of Shreveport, LA (see Daily GPI, Dec. 14) to last through the end of February 2000.

Shippers dabbling in the released capacity market have a newtool in the form of an Internet-based service that will alert themwhen capacity they are interested in becomes available.CapacityCenter.com this week launched a Web site that gives the gasindustry access to a database of current and historical informationfrom the released capacity market. CapacityCenter.com utilizes adatabase of gas capacity information compiled over the past fiveyears by Skipping Stone subsidiary TransCapacity.

Shippers dabbling in the released capacity market have a newtool in the form of an Internet-based service that will alert themwhen capacity they are interested in becomes available.CapacityCenter.com this week launched a Web site that gives the gasindustry access to a database of current and historical informationfrom the released capacity market. CapacityCenter.com utilizes adatabase of gas capacity information compiled over the past fiveyears by Skipping Stone subsidiary TransCapacity.

Transco alerted shippers that some production possibly could beinterrupted today on the Southeast Louisiana Lateral. The U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers is expected to take about eight hours tocomplete matting of the western bank of the Mississippi River.Transco said it will make every operational effort to keep thiswork from impacting production, but curtailments are possible ifunforeseen events lengthen the operation.