Due to Hurricane Ike’s approach, Northern Natural Gas, operator of Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS), declared a systemwide force majeure Thursday and required all MOPS platforms to shut in. All receipt and delivery points were being allocated to zero flow effective with Evening cycle nominations for Thursday’s gas day. The force majeure will remain in affect “until all harmful affects of the hurricane have passed,” Northern said.

Citing required evacuations by local authorities in Texas because of Hurricane Ike, Texas Eastern said third-party processing facilities on its system in Texas were shutting down operations Thursday morning. It posted a long list of Texas meters that were required to shut in by 6 a.m. Thursday and said they will be scheduled to zero “until such time when gas processing can be restored.”

Sea Robin Pipeline said all receipt points were shut in and nominations reduced accordingly Thursday because the Hess-operated Sea Robin Processing Plant had been shut in and was not dehydrating gas.

Pacific Gas & Electric is ending Friday a systemwide high-inventory OFO on its California Gas Transmission system that had been in effect for the previous two days.

Vermilion Parish, LA, was under mandatory evacuation orders Thursday, Trunkline said, and that will jeopardize its ability to maintain operations at Kaplan Compressor Station. “Once the station goes down, capacity flowing east through Kaplan will be limited to 150,000 Dth/d,” it added.

Gulf South reported that the tide from Hurricane Ike began affecting operation of its Burns facility early Thursday morning and it will be unable to resume operations until the storm has passed and water recedes. Fourteen meters were required to shut in until Burns operations resume; see the bulletin board for a list.

Northwest said its system balancing account at the Jackson Prairie storage facility is about 300,000 Dth short of its required balance for an upcoming down-hole test starting Oct. 1. The pipeline asked all receiving parties north of Meacham Compressor Station that owe imbalance gas to Northwest gas to pay it back over the next two weeks. It also requested cooperation for the rest of September from customers north of Meacham to either stay on rate or bank gas on the system.

In anticipation of the possible disruption of processing plants in Texas due to the impending landfall of Hurricane Ike, Tennessee set a hydrocarbon dew point (HDP) limit of 20 degrees F for its HDP Segment and all receipt meters south of Station 40 (Natchitoches, LA), including the Carthage Lateral. The limit took effect Thursday until further notice. Tennessee said its action was to prevent anticipated hydrocarbon liquid fallout and to assure that gas will be accepted for delivery into system interconnects. See the bulletin board for further details.

Rockies Express lifted Thursday the force majeure that had been issued Wednesday for its booster facility at the Wamsutter Echo Springs interconnect in Sweetwater County, WY.

Trunkline will begin an outage of about five days Monday at Cypress Station to perform electrical work and repair a check valve, during which station capacity will be limited to 270 MMcf/d.

CenterPoint added the CEFS MOPAC point Thursday to a list of those that must shut in during repairs to Line O (see Daily GPI, Sept. 11).

NGPL will perform an annual emergency shutdown test Tuesday through Thursday on Units 9 and 10, as well as install a permanent switch on Unit 10, at Station 343 in Liberty County, TX. This will require reduced capacity in Segment 25 of the TexOk Zone, NGPL said, and ITS/AOR and Firm Secondary out-of-path services will not be available.

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