Station

NGPL declared a force majeure after discovering a line leak on the Fletcher Lateral near Compressor Station 156 in Caddo County, OK. The impacted pipe section has been taken out of service and until further notice the Kerr-McGee-Patterson #1-8 receipt point is unavailable for transport services, NGPL said.

Columbia Gas (TCO) declared a force majeure following an oil pump failure on a unit at Walbridge Compressor Station in Wayne County, WV. Coupled with a Line P construction outage, the oil pump failure has resulted in the inability to receive production from meters on Lines BM-39 and BM-19, TCO said. Operating capacity at 18 meters was taken to zero Tuesday, while capacity at another meter was allocated downward by 14%.

Mississippi Hub LLC (MS Hub) has asked FERC for permission to place into service an interconnect pipeline header and associated meter station that will connect its storage terminal in southern Mississippi with Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco).

ANR reported beginning engine repairs at St. John Compressor Station along its Michigan Leg South, reducing total St. John west-to-east capacity by 100 MMcf/d (leaving 1,195 MMcf/d available) through Friday. Based on current nominations, the reduction may result in curtailment of IT and Firm Secondary nominations, ANR said.

Shortly before 10 a.m. CDT Tuesday a flash fire occurred during a welding job at Station 201 of the Herscher gas storage facility in Kankakee County, IL, injuring five workers. The facility is connected to Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America. As of early Tuesday afternoon, four of the five injured had been released from the hospital with one remaining in stable condition. “The flash fire was extinguished immediately and the area has been secured,” a Kinder Morgan spokesman said. “The cause of the flash fire is under investigation. Currently there is no impact to customer service.”

Southern California Gas lost 75 MMcf/d of injection capacity at its Playa del Rey storage field due to a retrofit of station injection piping. The restriction, which adds no impact to one that began late last week, is expected to last through March 28.

Southern California Edison Co. last Friday reconnected its Unit 3 at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station along the Pacific Coast in the far north end of San Diego County, marking the completion of a 10-year, $671 million replacement of the steam generators at both of the 2,200 MW nuclear plant’s two operating units. Unit 3 was taken down for planned maintenance and the generator replacement early in October last year. The other unit completed similar work in 2009 as part of an overall effort that the utility estimated will save its customers more than $1 billion over the remaining licensing period for the plant that runs through 2022.

Saying it has limited operational flexibility to manage imbalances in zones 0, L, 1 and 2, and due to the force majeure at Station 214 in Ohio resulting from a potential pipe rupture Thursday night, Tennessee issued an Imbalance Warning Monday requiring all delivery point operators in those zones to keep actual daily takes out of the system equal to or greater than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position. Similarly, all receipt point operators in the zones were asked to keep actual daily receipts into the system equal to or less than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position.

California utilities continue to announce efforts to site central station and distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) installations as an alternative to natural gas-fired power, which is the dominant source of electricity in the state.