Sonat declared force majeure Wednesday after experiencing an unscheduled outage of the 12-inch Breton Sound Line offshore southeastern Louisiana. In order to make repairs, Sonat found it necessary to isolate and blow down about 15 miles of pipe. Gas was not being scheduled for Thursday’s gas day on the timely, evening and intraday 1 cycles from the Breton Sound 11, 18/19, 21, 32 and 36 receipt points. However, repairs were being completed Thursday afternoon, and Sonat canceled the force majeure and said it would begin accepting nominations at the five points again effective with the intraday 2 cycle for Thursday and the evening cycle for today.

Gulf South began scheduled maintenance Thursday on its Index 130 segment between the Louisiana communities of Napoleonville and Montpelier. The work will continue through Jan. 24 and could reduce Index 130 capacity by as much as 100 MMcf/d, the pipeline said.

Columbia Gas reminded FSS customers Thursday that they must adhere to Section 4(d) of their rate schedule, which requires that storage account volumes not exceed 65% of the SCQ (Storage Contract Quantity) level as of Feb. 1.

It took longer to accomplish than previously expected (see Daily GPI, Jan. 16), but Westcoast was able to restore processing capacity at its McMahon Gas Plant near Fort St. John, BC, to its normal 630 MMcf/d around mid-afternoon Wednesday. The capacity had been cut by about a third Tuesday due to excessive foaming of a monoethanol amine (MEA) treatment solution causing a shutdown of processing train #3.

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