storage

El Paso said there will be no withdrawals from its Washington Ranch storage facility through Friday while repairs are made to the dehydration plant’s fire tube. Washington Ranch’s #2 compressor was already down for maintenance through Oct. 17, limiting injections to about 75 MMcf/d. As a result of these maintenance projects, El Paso said it has lost a large degree of operational flexibility and will impose custody limits on delivery points and/or place caps on receipt point as needed to maintain system integrity.

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).

Dominion experienced a rupture Saturday on a 20-inch supply line to one of its storage facilities in Harrison County, WV. The blast occurred in a remote area and didn’t cause a fire or injuries, a spokesman said. The line was isolated shortly afterwards, and because it wasn’t a residential line, no one lost service, he said. The pipeline was continuing an investigation into the cause of the incident Monday.

Columbia Gulf has scheduled maintenance at Egan Hub Storage in South Louisiana for Tuesday, during which capacity will be zero. The pipeline said it would resume accepting up to 150,000 Dth/d in injection/withdrawal nominations Wednesday.

The Massachusetts State Auditor on Thursday reported lax oversight by the Department of Telecommunications and Energy (DTE) of the state’s 20 peak shaving and satellite liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facilities. The facilities, which are a various locations around the state, hold about 9.5 Bcf of natural gas and can deliver a total of 1 Bcf/d.

With the oil price squeeze, flat North American natural gas production and a strong gas storage surplus, “a trading range of $5-7/Mcf is likely to persist,” for the next year or two, said energy consultant Stephen Smith in a new report.

Northwest has scheduled installation of a filter/separator at its interconnect with Questar’s Clay Basin Storage Facility for April 27-28. Physical injections and withdrawals from or to Northwest will not be possible for those gas days, Questar said.

The cash market got mugged Friday as little weather-related load, a bearish storage report, prior-day energy futures weakness and lower weekend demand from industrial end-users ganged up on prices. Double-digit losses were unusually consistent across all geographic market areas, ranging from about 20 cents to about 35 cents.

El Paso said the well maintenance work Wednesday at Washington Ranch storage facility was affecting only half of the wells, and thus it was able to continue withdrawals or injections of approximately 75 MMcf/d. On Thursday it will be necessary to withdraw for at least a portion of the day to remove the dissolved solids from the treated well.