NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) said last week it found a large new market for its Phase V expansion project. It signed a long-term contract to provide 180 MMcf/d of firm transportation capacity to Tampa Electric’s repowered Bayside generating plant (1,475 MW) in Hillsborough County in southwestern Florida.

Sempra Energy, PG&E Corp. and Proxima Gas SA de CV announcedlast week a three-way effort to build and operate a $230 million,212-mile natural gas pipeline to serve the rapidly growing energyloads in the southern end of California and the northern tip ofBaja along the U.S.-Mexico border. The principal target market isnew and existing electric generating plants and “otherenergy-intensive industries” in northern Baja, the sponsors said.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week it will funda Billings, MT, company’s proposal to further refine and test acoal-based filtering product that could remove the impurities inthe water produced by stripper gas wells, thereby greatly reducingwaste-water disposal costs for producers and royalty owners. In theend, the DOE believes the product has the potential tosignificantly prolong the life of the thousands of stripper gaswells in the United States.

Trailblazer Pipeline is planning an expansion project and apotential extension to serve growing production in the Powder Riverbasin in Wyoming. The pipeline last week started an open season totest the market for both projects.

A report released last week by the newly named Gas TechnologyInstitute (created by the merger of GRI and the Institute of GasTechnology) predicts that technological advances will increase theeconomic lower-48 resource base by 250 Tcf and Canadian recoverableresources by 125 Tcf.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline is planning a new 400 MMcf/d gas pipelinein the western Gulf of Mexico that will connect Tennessee’sexisting system to the High Island Offshore System (HIOS), pendingregulatory approvals.

GRI and the Institute of Gas Technology (IGT) named theirrecently merged organizations the Gas Technology Institute (GTI)last week and formed a senior management team led by John F.Riordan, president and CEO. The research groups announced theirmerger in April, saying it was mainly an effort to reduceoverlapping dues paid by their members and to combine the variousstrengths of the two entities.

Electric generation’s growing appetite for natural gas ispropelling rapid changes in the gas industry’s traditional businesspractices that will pose greater challenges to pipeline safety,says the chairman of the INGAA Pipeline Safety Task Force.

With temperatures dropping considerably out of theirtriple-digit-heat conditions on Friday, California energy officialsbegan assessing the economic and operating impact of rotatingblackouts in numerous San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods lastWednesday and the curtailment Thursday of 135 large industrialcustomers in Sacramento and Stockton totaling 300 MW.