TransColorado Gas Transmission announced plans to move forward with an expansion project designed to provide 300,000 Dth/d of increased firm transportation out of the Piceance Basin to a proposed interconnection with Wyoming Interstate Co. at the Greasewood Hub in Colorado.

TransColorado said the project is supported by a long term contract with an unnamed shipper for 280,000 Dth/d of transportation capacity. The contract runs through 2015 with an option for a five-year extension.

The project would involve a flow reversal on the northern part of the TransColorado system. Gas flow would be reversed on the 46-miles of the pipeline between DeBeque, CO, and the Greasewood Hub in Rio Blanco County, by modifying existing interconnections and installing a new north-end compressor station for a total cost of $20 million.

Following completion of the project, shippers will be able to transport gas south, as they do now, to the San Juan Basin and on to markets in the Southwest and California, or north to the new WIC connection and then onto the Cheyenne Hub and the new Cheyenne Plains pipeline, among others, and then on to Midwestern and Midcontinent markets. The TransColorado project is expected to be completed in January 2006.

“This expansion project demonstrates the flexibility of the TransColorado system and will be an important piece of infrastructure for handling increased natural gas volumes from the Piceance Basin to the Midwest and other key markets,” said Richard Kinder, CEO of Kinder Morgan Inc., which owns TransColorado. Kinder noted that a $33 million expansion went into service in August on TransColorado, raising southbound capacity to 425,000 Dth/d from 300,000 Dth/d. Total long-haul capacity is nearly completely subscribed through 2007, the company said.

However, rising production in the Piceance Basin from Williams, EnCana and other producers is driving several projects that will transport gas east, including this TransColorado expansion, EnCana’s Entrega Pipeline and others (see Daily GPI, May 20, Aug. 13, July 23).

The Cheyenne Plains system, a 380 mile 36-inch diameter pipeline from the Cheyenne Hub in northeastern Colorado to Greensburg, KS, has received regulatory approvals, is under construction and is expected to begin transporting up to 560,000 Dth/d of gas in January. The pipeline will provide significant new takeaway pipeline capacity to a region that has been capacity constrained for years (see Daily GPI, Sept. 28).

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