El Paso declared an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty situation Tuesday, saying its Washington Ranch storage facility was experiencing maximum withdrawals. To insure system integrity, the pipeline planned to limit scheduled volumes at underperforming interconnects.

With projections of linepack exceeding its maximum target level through at least Thursday, Pacific Gas & Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Wednesday, only four days after a similar OFO last Saturday. The current order carries a stringent zero tolerance for positive daily imbalances and $1/Dth penalties.

Shippers banked (left nominated volumes on-system in excess of actual deliveries) about 200,000 dekatherms over the Oct. 17-19 weekend, Northwest said, adding, “With the Jackson Prairie storage field currently full, this excessive banking is increasing linepack to unacceptable levels.” Requesting that “Receiving Parties” to whom Northwest owes gas arrange to take that gas as soon as possible, the pipeline said, “We realize that Receiving Parties may not be obliged to do so, but if we are able to decrease our linepack and storage inventory, we might be able to avoid more drastic measures.” If necessary, customer-specific or systemwide entitlements may be declared, Northwest said.

A one-day outage of Angleton (TX) Station’s discharge that had been set for last Thursday has been rescheduled for Wednesday (Oct. 22), Texas Eastern said. At current nominated levels, receipts in the South Texas, East Texas and M-1 24-inch zones may be restricted.

TransCanada is holding an open season through Monday for mainline FT and Storage Transportation Service that will become available starting Nov. 1 or later. The FT is from Empress to various delivery zones on the system. See the bulletin board for details.

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