Northern Natural Gas extended through at least Sunday the System Underrun Limitation for all market areas that had been previously declared for Saturday’s gas day (see Daily GPI, July 25).

Tennessee noted that it began performing final pigging of the 527A-700 Line last Monday, an operation expected to take approximately eight hours with the line and two meters (South Pass 77 and South Pass Block 77A) returning to service Tuesday. Unfortunately the pig was not successfully retrieved on the SP 77A platform and is lodged in the line in 200 feet of water, Tennessee said Friday. Efforts to free the pig using pipeline pressure have not worked. Divers are performing ultrasonic testing to determine the pig’s exact location. After it is located, a section of the line may need to be removed and the pig manually removed, which would take several days. The 527A-700 Line is not expected to return to service prior to Aug. 1, with further delay possible, the pipeline said.

The Leupp Station’s D turbine is down pending correction of a vibration problem, El Paso said. This outage, combined with scheduled pigging of Line 1201, reduced capacity of the North Mainline by 125 MMcf/d effective with Friday’s Cycle 1 nominations until further notice. In another area, completion of several pipeline repairs between Cornudas and El Paso Stations and improved operating conditions allowed El Paso to raise capacity through Pecos River Station to full summer capacity of 1,106 MMcf/d.

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