Northern Natural Gas noted Wednesday that like many other storage operators, it continues to experience high storage inventories. “While IDD shippers have brought their inventory balances down considerably this month, Northern will continue to have limited capacity for IDD volumes for the remainder of the summer season,” it said. “Northern needs to protect its storage capability in order to not jeopardize its ability to meet firm storage daily and inventory requirements.” Thus the pipeline gave notice that its Positive IDD Storage Inventory Allocation will be extended from July 31 to Oct. 31. Shippers whose IDD account balance at the end of the April 21 gas day was negative must have a balance no greater than zero on Oct. 31, Northern said. Those with positive balances at the end of the April 21 gas day must have a balance no greater than that on Oct. 31. Any IDD volumes that exceed those limits will become the pipeline’s property. Northern emphasized that this allocation process does not limit a customer’s ability to continue using IDD for the purpose of providing an interruptible daily and monthly balancing service. See the bulletin board for other details of the notice.

Northwest has changed the dates for pigging facility installations, previously rescheduled to July 29-Aug. 1, to Aug. 1-3. During the work there will be no flow through the mainline at the Green River South Constraint Point, and Questar‘s Clay Basin storage facility will be unavailable on Aug. 1. Northwest will cut all nominations at the Clay Basin receipt/delivery points on Aug. 1, and the Green River South Constraint Point will be cut to a net zero for all three days of the project. If primary nominations exceed the constraint capacity, Northwest said, it will declare a deficiency period and cut nominations accordingly.

Citing operating pressures between itself and Texas Eastern, Transco said Wednesday it will not be accepting nominations at the Lacy TETCO interconnect in Hidalgo County, TX until further notice.

Questar will perform maintenance at its Fidlar Compressor Station Aug. 8, which will reduce capacity in the ML 80 segment to 180,000 Dth/d in nomination cycles 1, 2 and 3 for this gas day. Based on current nominations, this represents a 55% reduction of flexed nominations, Questar said. The ML 80 capacity will return to 265,000 Dth/d in cycle 4 on the same gas day.

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