Noting that total working gas storage capacity on its system is 60.0 Bcf, Southern Natural Gas said its inventory stood at 42.0 Bcf as of May 4, or 70% of capacity. That compares with 25.5 Bcf (43%) and 24.4 Bcf (41%) at the comparable stages of the 2005 and 2004 injection seasons respectively, Southern said. Storage is now 16.5 Bcf ahead of the year-ago level, and at historical injection rates, Southern projects that maximum storage capacity could be reached before mid-summer. “If this trend continues, please note that it might be necessary to implement the following restrictions on…[certain] types of transactions to preserve firm obligations and interruptible quantities that have already been accepted,” the pipeline said in a posting Wednesday. See the bulletin board for details on potential transaction restrictions.

NGPL declared force majeure Thursday following an unplanned outage at Station 343 in Liberty County, TX (Segment 25 of the TexOk Zone). The outage was caused by the failure of a part upon NGPL’s attempted restart of a compressor at the station 343 following the completion Wednesday of maintenance on the unit that was unrelated to the failed part. The pipeline said it will begin repairs as soon as possible after locating a replacement part, and estimated completion of the work is unknown at this time. There was no shipper impact for Thursday’s gas day, but effective Friday until further notice, NGPL expects to schedule Primary firm and Secondary in-path firm services to a minimum of 77% of MDQ (maximum daily quantity) for each contract with Segment 25 Primary/Secondary in-path rights that is nominated through and downstream of Station 343. The actual scheduling percentage will depend on the level of nominations, NGPL said. ITS/AOR and Secondary out-of-path services will not be available in the affected area, but receipts from points at and downstream of Station 343 will not be impacted.

Questar reported identifying pipeline anomalies during recent maintenance on its ML 68 segment that required the section of ML 68 between Rifle Cogen and Clough Station to be taken out of service. The Divide Creek, Hunter Mesa, Hunter Mesa 2, Philpott Tap and Rifle Cogen points were taken to zero volume Wednesday, and Questar expects this part of ML 68 to be out of service through Saturday’s gas day.

Panhandle Eastern, which took its E-301 compressor out of service March 7 for maintenance, had expected to return it to service May 12, but said the maintenance has been extended until further notice. Expected capacity through the pipeline’s Seiling segment will remain limited to 280 MMcf/d, but Panhandle does not anticipate any impact to customer nominations.

Maritimes & Northeast said Thursday dates for the first planned outage of Sable Offshore Energy Project processing facilities this month (see Daily GPI, May 11) have been changed to May 14-20 instead of May 15-20 as originally planned. A second outage remains tentatively scheduled for May 26-31.

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