Ruby Pipeline flows have been cut to zero until further notice as Ruby declared a force majeure after experiencing a fire and some damage Saturday in its block valve 6 yard in a remote area of southeastern Cache County, UT. A segment of its pipeline around the block valve 6 was shut in and isolated to allow damage assessment and repairs. Ruby said Sunday it is unable to receive or deliver gas. Based on an inspection of the fire damage, which occurred at a gas line to auxiliary equipment, the damage will require more repairs to the valve, valve operator and auxiliary equipment than initially thought, the pipeline added. A road to the snow-covered site has been plowed and repair crews are on site.

In a related notice, Williams Field Services (WFS) said the Ruby outage was impacting the WFS-operated Opal Plant. On Sunday WFS said, “During the overnight hours Opal has been assisted by the other downstream delivery pipes in flowing unscheduled gas, but they are simply unable to absorb an excess volume of this magnitude. Until shippers can reroute their gas and Opal has the takeaway capacity at the tailgate, gas previously flowing into Ruby Pipeline will be backed into the field and compression taken offline as necessary.”

Pacific Gas and Electric issued systemwide Stage 2 low-inventories for Monday and Tuesday on its California Gas Transmission system, setting the penalty for exceeding negative imbalances of 5% at $1/Dth.

Tennessee said it has completed inspection of Unit 1A at Station 323, but repairs to the “identified issues” are ongoing. Tennessee estimates that the unit will be available and returned to service Friday. Until then, the estimated impact of the station being unavailable is 155,000 Dth/d. Based on current nominations pro rata restrictions through Standard Out of Path service are required.

Effective with Intraday 2 nominations for Monday’s gas day, Northwest began accepting nomination requests for interruptible storage at the Jackson Prairie facility under its SGS-2I rate schedule. “If it becomes necessary for Northwest to utilize this storage capacity for firm obligations or system balancing, Northwest will provide shippers with seven-day advanced notice to withdraw their interruptible storage gas,” the pipeline said.

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