Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) extended Saturday’s high-linepack OFO through Sunday, then ended it Monday. SoCalGas also reported Saturday that it lost 410 MMcf/d of injection capacity when the blowdown relief stack for the main station at its Aliso Canyon storage facility was hit by lightning and caught on fire. The giant LDC said Sunday the fire had been extinguished, and Aliso Canyon personnel would be inspecting the stack for damages and system integrity Monday. It had managed to restore 100 MMcf/d of injection capacity but said full volumes would not be available until the stack is back in service. In order to maximize injection capacity, SoCalGas postponed planned maintenance at its Honor Rancho storage field.

Northwest said Sunday it had experienced excessive banking on its system north of Kemmerer (WY) Compressor Station in the previous few days, and this resulted in filling of the Jackson Prairie storage facility and high system linepack. “Due to this, Northwest is lifting the entitlement warning for overruns…and is requesting [that] all customers stay on rate or slightly draft the system until some balancing flexibility can be regained,” the pipeline said. “In addition, Northwest is also experiencing high linepack on the south end of the system (below Kemmerer). Given the limited ability to inject into Clay Basin, Northwest is asking all operators [on the] south [end] of the system to be on rate.”

CIG noted that in early October it had issued an Operational Warning about pipeline load factors and imbalance conditions at levels that would be difficult to sustain (see Daily GPI, Oct. 3). The conditions leading to the previous warning have continued, CIG said, “and the system remains highly sensitive to transportation and operational imbalances with little or no ability to accommodate imbalance makeup activity. Further, CIG’s daily injection rates have continued at or near the operational limits of the storage fields, which further limits CIG’s ability to absorb imbalances caused by mismatches between scheduled receipts and deliveries or those arising from variations in actual gas flow relative to scheduled quantities.” To ensure that reliable capacity is available to support firm service requirements, CIG extended limitations related to the situation through Nov. 11; see the bulletin board for details.

MRT has changed the dates for critical annual maintenance at its Unionville facility from Tuesday through Friday this week (see Daily GPI, Oct. 31) to Nov. 8-11.

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