Pacific Gas & Electric extended through Thursday a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO that had been issued for Wednesday, but tightened the tolerance for positive imbalances from 6% to zero.

Northwest noted that as the end of September nears, “all users of Jackson Prairie storage are challenged to fill their accounts on Sept. 30 while maintaining some balancing flexibility in the interim.” However, customers have drafted the pipeline’s system for the past several days, requiring Northwest to withdraw a “significant amount” of gas from Jackson Prairie over the weekend to make up the difference. Northwest said that not only is it not in a position to cover further drafting, but its own account must also be full, and its inventory must be preserved for system balancing and OFO mitigation. If the drafting continues, Northwest said, it will limit gas going through the Kemmerer (WY) Compressor Station bottleneck to Primary only effective with Wednesday’s gas day, which would allow Northwest to move some of its gas from Clay Basin to keep its account at Jackson Prairie full. But as of late Wednesday afternoon, no announcement of enforcing such a restriction had been posted on the Northwest bulletin board.

©Copyright 2002 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.