Plant operator Williams Field Services declared force majeure after the Opal Plant in Wyoming experienced an emergency shutdown due to a power outage about 5:25 p.m. MDT Thursday, but the plant outage ended around 1 a.m. Friday, according to a representative of Jonah Gathering System behind Opal. A WFS spokesman later confirmed that the outage didn’t last much more than six hours and operations were resumed immediately after the power was restored. However, WFS made this bulletin board posting Friday: “As a result of this situation field units across the system were knocked offline. Field technicians continue to work diligently to bring gas back onto the system. Nominations were kept whole for gas day 04/07/05; however, Williams will need to make up the interconnect pipeline shortfall by lowering the EFM tolerance going forward until the imbalance has been eliminated. Shippers should expect to see market cuts for the next several days.” Kern River was reporting low linepack Friday in its farthest upstream segment (Muddy Creek to Elberta), which a spokesman confirmed was a result of the Opal shortfall. Kern River encouraged shippers in that segment to resolve any due-pipeline imbalance paybacks.

There will be zero flow for Tuesday’s gas day at Transwestern‘s North Needles border interconnect with Southern California Gas. SoCalGas will be making emergency leak repairs that day on a 2-inch pipe connecting to Line 235-1 on its side of the border, which requires the shutdown of Line 235-1. A Transwestern spokesman said its other interconnect with the SoCalGas system at Topock, AZ will operate normally Tuesday, but he was unaware of whether there was any available capacity for Topock deliveries.

Sonat revised its projection for the return to service of a compressor at Muldon Storage Field in Mississippi after unscheduled maintenance to “no sooner than Sunday” (April 10). It had previously expected the unit to be back in operation by Friday evening (see Daily GPI, April 6).

Dominion is conducting April 10-17 pressure stabilization tests at its Bridgeport Storage Pool. During this period, Dominion said, it will maintain deliveries to Columbia Gas via the Cassity Mountain interconnect and will attempt to manage the test without shutting in any production. However, the situation is totally weather-dependent, Dominion continued, and should the weather become unseasonably warm, it may have to shut in some production in Bubbles 4202, 4203 and 4205.

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