Shutdown

Residual impacts from last year’s Gulf of Mexico hurricanes, higher taxes and a prolonged Texas refinery shutdown sent BP plc’s 1Q2006 net profit down 15% from a year ago, despite higher commodity prices. The London-based major posted a net profit of $5.63 billion, compared with $6.602 billion in 1Q2005.

While another shutdown of Central Gulf production is possible by the weekend given the projected path of Tropical Storm Wilma, producers made relatively substantial gains restoring supply over this past weekend. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) said that 149 MMcf/d of shut-in offshore production was restored since Friday, and consulting firm Bentek Energy said scheduled gas flows Monday on regional pipelines indicate onshore and offshore production rose about 414 MMcf/d.

TEPPCO has scheduled a concurrent Bird Station shutdown and Pioneer processing facility turnaround in the Jonah Gathering Field to occur both Oct. 5 and Oct. 12. According to the Kern River bulletin board, TEPPCO has estimated that each day’s work will require downtime of approximately 15 hours and an estimated curtailment of 753 MMcf. Because most Kern River supply comes to it either through the Opal Plant downstream of Jonah or the Pioneer receipt points, there will be an impact to Kern River shippers. During TEPPCO’s Oct. 5 maintenance, Kern River will take the opportunity to complete semi-annual maintenance on Fillmore Station’s Unit #2, previously scheduled for Oct. 19, and the Warm Springs Station hot tap, previously scheduled for Oct. 20. The pipeline asked shippers and operators to align their supplies with markets so that no banking occurred Tuesday (in preparation for the Oct. 5 work) and no drafting occurs on Oct. 5.

Columbia Gulf said it will begin accepting nominations Wednesday for up to 183,000 Dth/d Egan Hub Storage in South Louisiana following a one-day maintenance shutdown of Egan Tuesday. The pipeline had previously expected to have only 150,000 Dth/d of Egan capacity available Wednesday (see Daily GPI, July 26).

Northwest cautioned shippers of the possibility of a deficiency day being declared during the upcoming four-day shutdown of the Clay Basin storage facility. Along with work scheduled by Clay Basin operator Questar, Northwest will be installing a new separator at its Clay Basin interconnect Wednesday and Thursday. Upon completion of the installation, Questar will perform a meter calibration beginning Friday and lasting through Saturday. There will also be no physical injections or withdrawals during all four days. “Due to the length of the combined outages, it is unlikely that Northwest will be able to mitigate any impacts to customer nominations,” the pipeline said. “Therefore, Clay Basin injection and withdrawal nominations must net to zero at the end of every cycle for gas days April 27 and 28. If primary nominations exceed a net of zero, a deficiency day will be declared and nominations will be cut accordingly.” Clay Basin is expected to return to full design capacity for Sunday’s gas day.

Atlantic LNG, the largest source of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the United States, shut down its three liquefaction trains on Monday because of striking construction and tugboat workers. There was no word on when the strike would be lifted or when shipments would resume.

Duke Energy could announce a dividend cut Wednesday and may have to shutdown significantly under performing power plants in the Southeast, according to Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Fleishman, who warned during a conference call Tuesday that investors should expect a dividend cut to between 70 and 75 cents/share from $1.10.

El Paso said that coincidentally with its June 24-28 annual maintenance shutdown of the Keystone Station, another unspecified pipeline that serves the same area experienced an unscheduled outage and “the combined effect on the Permian area has caused large volumes of gas to be shut in.” To help alleviate the situation, El Paso is forgoing some of the planned work at Keystone in order to return it to service ahead of schedule. The “A” plant became available Wednesday afternoon, and capacity through Keystone was raised to 600 MMcf/d effective with Thursday’s Cycle 2 nominations. Keystone’s “B” plant, which normally pumps gas south to the Waha Area, will not be available until Cycle 1 on Saturday. See the bulletin board for further details.

Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System completed a pigging operation that caused a shutdown of the pipeline last week due to excess liquids (see Daily GPI, Oct. 23). The outage affected flows of about 115 MMcf/d. MOPS delivery nominations were being accepted again Friday for intraday scheduling.