Transportation

Pacific Gas & Electric said less than 1,000 of the more than60,000 customers who lost natural gas service last week in SantaCruz County, CA, were still without service Monday. A massivelandslide Wednesday had ruptured two main transmission pipelinesserving the county, which is southwest of San Jose. More than 600PG&E workers and another 190 from Southern California Gasworked thoughout the weekend to restore service. Facilities withhot showers were set up in two towns for those without gas to heatwater. It was PG&E’s largest gas restoration project since the1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused severe damage to thedistribution system throughout Northern and Central California, thecompany said.

In a two-page mea culpa to shippers, Enron Transportation &Storage (ETS) owned up to seven sins revealed by a recent customersurvey and offered six solutions with the promise of more to come.

No one stepped up to take either of the two 593,000 MMBtu/dpackages of El Paso Natural Gas transportation capacity NGC postedfor release over the past 10 days. One package was offered thoughthe end of April and the other through December 1999. Theycomprised 40% of the 1.3 Bcf/d NGC holds on El Paso and 80% of itsaccess to the San Juan Basin under the purchased contracts. NGC’sMike Flinn said market players missed a huge opportunity. One thatNGC isn’t likely to offer again.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) today received approval from theWashington State Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) tomake natural gas available for the first time to portions ofKittitas County.

Reacting to frigid weather spreading into the Southeast, Sonatis implementing an Operational Flow Order Type 3 effective todayfor four groups: Birmingham Group, South Main Zone 2, South MainZone 3 and Brunswick Line. The OFO will be extended Wednesday tothe East of Wrens and Savannah Line groups. Due to compressorproblems, Sonat said, the level of interruptible service in the twoSouth Main zones will be less than normal in limitation periods. Inaddition, an OFO Type 22 notice to become effective Wednesday forseven groups was issued by Sonat affiliate South Georgia NaturalGas.

Transwestern said its La Plata compressor station will be downthrough Thursday, March 5, for construction. There will be zerovolumes flowing from the Ignacio area to the Blanco Hub.Interconnects affected are NWPL-La Plata, WFS Ignacio Plant, andAmoco Florida River Plant. Capacity from the Blanco Hub to Thoreauwill remain at 800,000 MMcf/d. The same scenario also will applyMarch 28 through 31, Transwestern said.

KN’s Bushton Plant will have a Lean Side Outage through March 5.Only the Lean Side Processing capabilities will be affected.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Express 500 Project, which offers firmtransportation through the bottlenecked Gulf of Mexico supply area,won more than 1 Bcf/d of capacity requests from customers duringthe project’s first open season. “We believe that this level ofparticipation demonstrates the need for incremental capacity fromthe Gulf Coast,” said Tennessee President John Somerhalder II.

El Paso continued a 30 MMcf/d allocation of the San JuanCrossover through today due to unforeseen problems extendingmaintenance on the Laguna Station (Cibola County, NM) #3compressor. El Paso also postponed maintenance on the WendenStation (La Paz County, AZ) “A” turbine, which had been scheduledearlier this week, to March 16-18 to coincide with a total shutdownof the station March 17. Havasu Crossover capacity will be cut by80 MMcf/d on March 16 and 18 and by 150 MMcf/d on March 17.