Transco issued an Imbalance OFO with 5% tolerance for positive imbalances, effective Tuesday until further notice. The pipeline noted that it has provided repeated notice of limited operating flexibility as a result of moderate temperatures throughout its market area, but continued to experience “an unacceptable increase” in due-shipper imbalances since it ended an Operational Control Friday (see Daily GPI, Nov. 14). “This has created exigent circumstances that require immediate action,” it said. Customers with daily due-pipeline imbalance will not be subject to penalty.

Southern California Gas kept a high-linepack OFO declared for Saturday in place Sunday and Monday before lifting it for Tuesday.

Iroquois took its Boonville Compressor Station offline Monday morning for an overhaul that is expected to last up to 10 days. Iroquois said it has been working aggressively with Siemens, the compressor manufacturer, to accelerate the overhaul schedule. Based on nominations late last week, it may be possible to complete the outage with little or no restriction of firm service, the pipeline said. Any such restrictions, if implemented, would affect only volumes flowing through Boonville, while nominations with receipt points south of Boonville would be unaffected.

El Paso warned shippers Sunday that a Strained Operating Conditions (SOC) declaration might be required Monday because of system packing caused by excess receipts and takes that were significantly below nomination levels. The Washington Ranch Storage facility was injecting at maximum capacity, El Paso said in urging shippers to bring their supplies into balance. As of mid-afternoon Monday no SOC had been declared.

In a related note to the announcement by Enterprise Products Partners that it hopes to finish repairs of hurricane damage at the Toca processing plant in southeast Louisiana by the end of this week (see related story), Southern Natural Gas said Monday it had completed sufficient repairs to its facilities upstream of Toca that it was accepting nominations at 31 upstream receipt points. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, scheduled supply at these 31 points was about 340 MMcf/d, Southern said; for Monday’s gas day, scheduled supply at these points totaled about 200 MMcf/d.

Signaling that system linepack had stabilized, NOVA returned its imbalance tolerance range to 4/-4 Saturday after having set it at 0/-4 the day before.

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