Pacific Gas & Electric kept a systemwide high-inventory OFO in effect through Sunday before lifting it Monday. Then the utility declared a customer-specific OFO for Tuesday. PG&E also noted late last week that it has suspended pipeline balancing storage injections “because the entire inventory reserved for pipeline balancing has been exceeded.” As a result, the utility’s California Gas Transmission (CGT) system is looking at calling late afternoon OFOs as a way to manage ongoing overdeliveries that exceed demand. “When an OFO is necessary, CGT makes every effort to call the OFO by 7:30 a.m. Pacific time the day prior to the gas flow day, using a forecast of demand and scheduled supply. However, the forecast of system conditions at 7:30 a.m. does not always indicate the necessity for an OFO. When subsequent changes in system demand and/or scheduled supply necessitate some inventory control action, CGT’s two options are either to call an OFO later in the day or hold the interconnect constraints in a nomination cycle to the constraints which existed in a previous cycle. Customers have indicated a strong preference for CGT to call OFOs rather than holding to interconnect constraints. Therefore, we will consider calling an OFO as late as 6 p.m. Pacific time for the following gas day. We anticipate that calling an OFO, if deemed necessary, after reviewing the evening cycle nominations may reduce the need to hold the interconnect constraints to control pipeline system inventory.”

Transco said Monday it continues to experience moderate market conditions that, in conjunction with high storage levels, limit its ability to accommodate any increase in due-from-shipper (receipt makeup) imbalances. Effective Wednesday, it will not allow any nominations that create such imbalances, but will allow due-to-shipper (delivery makeup) imbalance nominations. Also, Transco will reduce pool tolerances to 1% starting with Evening Cycle nominations for Wednesday’s gas day.

An outage of the Hess Corp.-operated Sea Robin Processing Plant has been extended through Wednesday, but the plant should be available for Thursday’s gas day, Sea Robin Pipeline said Monday. The plant previously was expected to be down four days when the outage began last Wednesday (see Daily GPI, Oct. 12).

A gas quality problem has been reported at the Southern Star-Ford receipt point in Ford County, KS, NGPL said Monday. The point will become unavailable for scheduling Tuesday until further notice.

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