Threatening

New Mexico regulators late Wednesday were closely monitoring the troublesome Track fire in rural parts of the state, which was threatening natural gas services in areas in and around Raton and Las Vegas, NM.

The Wallow wildfire in eastern Arizona’s White Mountains on Wednesday was threatening energy facilities operated by UniSource Energy Corp.’s Tucson Electric Power (TEP) utility, but a utility spokesperson told NGI there was no immediate danger and outages so far had been avoided. Expanding at four to five miles daily, the fire has cut across 311,000 acres of dense pine forests running near TEP’s north-south transmission power lines and coal-fired generation complex at Springerville, AZ. Under threat are the two power lines that carry 1,100 MW of power from Springerville and San Juan Generating Stations into the greater Tucson area. If the fire came close enough to the power lines to shut them down, TEP can bring on additional local generation and coordinate with other utilities to avoid outages, a spokesperson said.

With a major pre-summer heat wave solidly entrenched from the South through the Midwest and threatening to spread into the Northeast — not to mention traders eyeing the prospects of a Caribbean low-pressure area that could become a tropical depression as it moves toward the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) — prices rose at nearly all points Monday.

Range Resources Corp. is threatening to leave a western Pennsylvania township over a dispute with local officials.

Range Resources Corp. is threatening to leave a western Pennsylvania township over a dispute with local officials.

An ample supply of gas, moderating temperatures and the lack of threatening tropical weather activity continues to put downward pressure on natural gas futures prices, according to Gene McGillian, an analyst with Tradition Energy. On Wednesday the September contract declined by 2.8 cents to close at $4.239.

Claiming that action by FERC is long overdue and threatening their project’s viability, Jordan Cove Energy Project LP (JCEP) and Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline LP (PCGP) have called on FERC to approve their requests for certificates to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal and associated pipeline facilities to serve the Pacific Northwest and portions of California and Nevada.

With linepack starting to bump up against its maximum target levels and threatening to greatly exceed them over the weekend, Pacific Gas & Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Friday on its California Gas Transmission system. Penalties of $1/Dth were set for positive daily imbalances exceeding a 6% tolerance. The giant dual utility had issued a systemwide low-inventory OFO Wednesday.

With its projected linepack threatening to sink well below minimum target levels, Pacific Gas & Electric made a belated declaration of a systemwide Stage 2 low-inventory OFO for Wednesday on its California Gas Transmission system and extended the OFO through at least Thursday. The penalty for exceeding a negative daily imbalance tolerance of 5% was set at $1/Dth on both days.