Saying drafting continues on its south system and that the Washington Ranch Storage facility has been experiencing maximum withdrawals since Monday, El Paso declared a Strained Operating Condition (SOC) Thursday. Although the SOC is directed specifically at the Arizona Public Service utility and Panda Resources‘ Gila River Power Plant, the pipeline urged all shippers to bring their supplies and demand into balance to minimize the SOC’s duration. The imbalance threshold for negative daily imbalances was set at 7%.

Columbia Gulf had expected to complete repairs of a leak on the riser of the Eugene Island 292 platform offshore Louisiana no later than Wednesday (see Daily GPI, June 21), but said Thursday the work had been delayed. The Eugene Island 292 and 286K platforms will remain shut in until the repairs are finished.

An ANR open season to solicit interest in expanded storage service was scheduled to end Wednesday (see Daily GPI, May 24), but the pipeline said since the open season was posted, it has sold more than 20 Bcf of storage, which accounts for virtually all of its currently available non-ROFR (right of first refusal) service for the 2006-2007 storage season. At the request of several interested parties and due to continuing inquiries for storage service in excess of currently available capacity, ANR extended the deadline for its nonbinding open season to 2 p.m. CDT July 8. All terms of last month’s posting remain in effect. See the bulletin board for details.

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