Due to a compressor failure at its Riner Station, Williamsdeclared a force majeure situation on Line Segments 490 and 491.Necessary repairs are expected to be completed by next Monday’s gasday. Since capacity in the two segments has been reduced,maintenance originally scheduled for the week of Aug. 21 at theCheyenne and Ogallah Stations will be done this week to minimizedisruptions during August, Williams said.

Citing high linepack and storage accounts, Northwest was notallowing any on-system balancing Wednesday until further notice.Off-system balancing was allowed “within reason,” the pipelinesaid.

An outage of Tennessee’s 400 Line near Edinburg, TX that had beenscheduled for Aug. 14-17 due to road crossing work has beencanceled. The Texas Department of Transportation has changed the roadproject in a manner that no longer requires a pipeline outage,Tennessee said. Seven meters that had been scheduled for shut-ins willremain in service. Tennessee also said an outage of its Donna Lateralin South Texas, delayed by construction difficulties, will not occurduring August as previously expected (see Daily GPI, July 25). This project has not yet beenrescheduled.

Kern River is holding an open season through Aug. 18 todetermine interest in year-round FT to Nevada and California andinterest in capacity relinquishment by existing firm shippers. Thepipeline said it can offer significantly reduced FT rates based onrecent FERC approval of Kern River’s Extended Term Rate Program (ETProgram). Under ET Program, customers could receive a ratereduction from $0.64/Dth to approximately $0.42 under a 15-yearcontract. Because system expansion can be accomplished by theaddition of compression facilities, it could result in an overalllowering of rolled-in rates for all shippers, Kern River said.Depending on open season results, the pipeline is proposing amainline expansion of up to 500 MMcf/d with an in-service targetdate of May 1, 2002. If goals can be met using relinquishedcapacity and no new facilities are required, new service couldbegin as early as Oct. 1, 2001. Call Laurie Brown at (801) 584-6410or Greg Snow at -7270 for more information.

Northwest extended the deadline for shippers to executeprecedent agreements for FT service on the proposed Grants PassLateral Expansion in western Oregon. Precedent agreements resultingfrom a Feb. 25-March 24 open season had been due July 14; in orderto give participants more time to evaluate the project, Northwestdelayed the deadline until Aug. 15. The 260-mile Grants PassLateral is fully contracted to serve markets between WashougalStation near Portland and Grants Pass, OR. Expansion service isexpected to begin Nov. 1, 2002. Call Dave Stevens at (801) 584-7101for more information.

PG&E Gas Transmission-Northwest (GTN) will implementelectronic data interchange (EDI) transactions Aug. 15 withdownstream utility affiliate Pacific Gas & Electric. A week ofsystem testing will precede that event. Beginning with nextMonday’s nominations for the Aug. 8 gas day, shippers must providethe applicable PG&E contract for receipts and/or deliveries atthe PG&E/GTN interconnect at Malin. During the transitionperiod GTN will test EDI scheduling and identify any mismatchednominations. Upon full implementation Aug. 15, GTN will no longermonitor mismatched nominations at Malin.

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