Citing high storage inventories and declining injectioncapabilities related to high field pressures, CIG will implement anOFO taking effect today until further notice for all firmtransportation and storage customers. To relieve a “criticaloperational situation,” CIG is limiting No-Notice Transportation(NNT-1 and NNT-2) customers to an injection maximum of 1/250th oftheir contractual Maximum Available Capacity. Shippers with storageinventory exceeding MAC should initiate withdrawals to get withintheir allowable limits, the pipeline said. Although interruptiblestorage customers (IS-1) were not specifically part of the OFO,they were notified that injections are not available. In additionto the storage situation, CIG said, excessive positive imbalanceson FT contracts are threatening system integrity.

Because of high linepack, Northern Natural Gas issued a SystemUnderrun Limitation notice effective Friday for all market-areazones. NNG continued force majeure allocations at least throughtoday for 18 points on its Hobbs System in eastern New Mexico dueto a compressor outage at the Plains Station in West Texas.

Sonat reminded shippers Wednesday of a force majeure associatedwith maintenance through Nov. 24 at its Bear Creek (LA) StorageField. Though the pipeline currently is not reducing the dailyinjection or withdrawal quantities of CSS customers, it anticipatesthat DIQ cutbacks could become necessary going into the weekendbased on current supply levels and load projections. An OFO Type 6may be issued for Saturday if supplies are not reduced fromprevailing levels, Sonat said

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