Transco said Tuesday it will “strongly consider issuing an Imbalance Operational Flow Order” due to below normal temperatures throughout much of its market area. “Market pricing and continued cold weather make it likely that current negative transportation imbalances will not be reduced. Transco cannot continue to manage these imbalances given current storage inventory levels and reduced operating flexibility. Absent immediate, voluntary resolution of shippers’ negative imbalances,” the OFO is a possibility, Transco said. The pipeline also noted that it will not accept any delivery make-up nominations for the rest of February 2003 and that pooling point tolerances had been tightened to 1% for negative imbalances.

A storage-related OFO will take effect March 1 on Texas Eastern (Tetco) until further notice. The pipeline projected Tuesday that based on current operating conditions, its total storage withdrawal capability would decline within five days to less than the total daily contracted firm storage withdrawal rights. Tetco set forth a set of conditions for shippers under certain storage rate schedules limiting them, “to the maximum extent contractually feasible, to non-storage deliveries from Texas Eastern’s system.” Penalties of $25/Dth will be assessed for unauthorized quantities. See the bulletin board for details.

Saying total linepack had dropped below targeted operational levels and it had experienced market-area overburns during the past week, Florida Gas Transmission notified customers in the market area that it was issuing an Overage Alert Day at 15% imbalance tolerance Tuesday.

Adding to a System Overrun Limitation that remains ongoing from last week, Northern Natural Gas posted a Critical Day notice for Tuesday and Wednesday, saying it was experiencing shortfalls of supply on its system.

One pipeline is in contrast to the many others issuing OFOs or similar constraints based on high demand and low linepack. Kern River said that due to expansion tie-in work being performed Tuesday through Thursday of this week, it cannot tolerate any banking on the system. “[I]t is imperative that operators take delivery of quantities that are scheduled immediately.” In addition, it encouraged customers to schedule delivery paybacks on an as-available basis.

An unplanned outage late Sunday evening on Foothills Pipe Lines‘ Saskatchewan system resulted in a full interruption of flows at the Monchy/Port of Morgan interconnect for several hours, Northern Border said. With no Canadian flows, Northern Border said it had no option but to shut down Compressor Station Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4. All four stations were back online Tuesday, said a spokesman, who added that Northern Border might be able to accept interruptible nominations again in Tuesday’s Intraday 2 cycle.

Line 1301 between Lincoln and Roswell Stations must be pigged again Friday, reducing the capacity of the San Juan Crossover by 80 MMcf/d, El Paso said. Guadalupe Station turbine filter changes have been rescheduled from Thursday to Friday. Capacity of the South Mainline will be reduced by 200 MMcf/d then, but under anticipated market conditions this outage should have minimal, if any, affect on scheduled volumes, the pipeline said.

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