Northwest reported Wednesday afternoon that over the past two days it “experienced a dramatic increase in the strain gauge readings on the 26-inch mainline” near Carson, WA in the Columbia River Gorge. As a result, a stress relief project previously scheduled to begin Friday instead was implemented Wednesday. The line was taken out of service in the interests of safety for excavation crews. Physical flows were cut to zero through Willard Compressor Station (normal design capacity of 425,000 Dth/d southbound and 487,000 Dth/d northbound). “Given the current flow patterns through this section of pipe, Northwest anticipates that storage flexibility will be used to meet customer requests during the outage,” it said. “However, any significant increase in nominations across the Gorge could result in capacity cuts and a possible deficiency period.” The pipeline did not project any date for ending the work.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFO beyond Thursday.

The compressor problem at East Hereford (PQ) Station on the TransQuebec & Maritimes (TQM) system (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12) has been identified, and repairs are expected to be completed by Sept. 26, TQM parent company TransCanada said. Force majeure declarations by both TQM and TransCanada in relation to the East Hereford outage will remain in effect until the unit is fully operational. However, given current operational conditions and nomination levels, TransCanada still does not anticipate any restrictions of service to East Hereford.

Columbia Gulf has scheduled pigging and other work on the 100 Line of the East Lateral for the Sept. 22-Nov. 7 period. See the bulletin board for a list of receipt and delivery meters that will be shut in by the work Oct. 6-30. The Gulf South-Bayou Blue delivery meter will be out of service for the entire duration of the project, Columbia Gulf said.

ANR said it is finalizing the EastLeg Expansion Project, which will serve the state of Wisconsin by increasing capacity along the mainline northward from the Hartford Meter Station starting in November 2005. As part of the project, ANR is holding a reverse open season through 2 p.m. CDT Sept. 24 to solicit the turnback of capacity that would act to serve the area of Wisconsin to be served by EastLeg. Call Andy Armstrong at (832) 676-5120 or Lynn Cannon at (262) 792-5405 for more information. ANR also is holding an open season with the same deadline for 20,870 Dth/d of FT-A capacity, and another 20,000 Dth/d of FTS-1 service from Marshfield, WI for deliveries to Joliet, Capital Drive, Waukesha, Milwaukee, Rochester or West Green Bay. Bids for capacity to delivery points other than those listed will be considered. The term of the available capacity from Marshfield (interconnect with Viking Gas Transmission) is Oct. 1, 2003 through Oct. 31, 2004. The other service begins Oct. 1, 2003 with no set term limit. See the bulletin board for details.

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