Northern Natural Gas issued a System Overrun Limitation notice (similar to a low-linepack OFO) for all market-area zones Monday.

Saying daily demand is exceeding its capacity, Sonat said eight market-area delivery groups will become subject to an OFO Type 3 Wednesday until further notice. Penalties of $15/Dth will apply to any shipper whose allocated deliveries exceed 102% of their daily entitlement at any affected delivery point. The OFO covers the Birmingham Group, South Main Zone 2, Atlanta Group, South Main Zone 3, East of Wrens, South Georgia-Lee County, Brunswick Line and Savannah Line. Concurrent with the OFO, Sonat will also be limiting interruptible capacity in the Chattanooga Group, East Tennessee Group, North Alabama Group and Tallapoosa Group.

A System Protection Warning took effect Monday morning on the MRT system. It is subject to these conditions: MRT will not schedule any mainline IT, AOR or imbalance volumes for delivery north of Glendale (AR) Station; firm volumes will be limited to their primary direction of flow; no short imbalance positions are being accepted; and shippers may not nominate supply from existing long imbalance positions. In order to avoid OFOs, MRT said, shippers who were relying on mainline IT, AOR and/or imbalance volumes are encouraged to resource supply to the East Line, where capacity is available, or reduce applicable delivery volumes.

Operator Northern Natural Gas said unplanned maintenance on the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System had been completed and all timely MOPS nominations were being accepted for Monday’s gas day. The offshore Texas pipe was shut in for more than two weeks after a leak was discovered near Matagorda Block 758 (see Daily GPI, Feb. 11). The outage affected about 100 MMcf/d of throughput at 24 receipt points and nine delivery points.

Pacific Gas & Electric had a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO in place Sunday with zero tolerance for positive imbalances. Penalties were $1/Dth. The OFO was discontinued Monday. Southern California Gas did not extend an Overnominations Day notice beyond Saturday.

In a System Imbalance Notice issued Monday, Transco said it has traditionally experienced significant negative imbalances (deliveries in excess of receipts) when cash-out index pricing is significantly lower than spot gas pricing. “Based upon current gas prices and current index averages, in addition to a significant increase in market loads for the balance of the month, it is likely Transco will experience significant negative imbalances,” according to the notice. The pipeline plans to closely monitor system conditions and said it may have to initiate restrictive practices at its pooling points and disallow make-up transportation if significant imbalances occur.

El Paso said the Cornudas Station’s 3A turbine will be down for a preventive inspection beginning late this evening. South Mainline capacity will be reduced by 10 MMcf/d today and by 20 MMcf/d Wednesday. The pipeline postponed an outage of Laguna Station’s 3 compressor that had been set for Monday through Thursday this week.

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