Due to significant landowner opposition to the project, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will not be able to approve East Tennessee Natural Gas Co.’s Patriot extension-expansion project in Tennessee and Virginia by the Sept. 5 deadline sought by the pipeline, Chairman Pat Wood told East Tennessee officials on Friday.

“[M]y staff is working as expeditiously as possible on East Tennessee’s project,” but “this completion date will not be possible,” he said in an Aug. 23 letter to Richard J. Kruse, East Tennessee’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs. He noted FERC staff still was finalizing its environmental review of the project, a process that was extended by East Tennessee’s modification and rerouting of the project.

“East Tennessee was advised [a year ago] that due to the amount of controversy generated by the Patriot project, the target date for the final environmental impact statement (EIS) could not be expected prior to September 2002,” Wood said.

Along with the preliminary determination issued for the Patriot pipeline in March, Wood warned that he might not be able to support a certificate for the project if East Tennessee did not first resolve landowners’ concerns (see Daily GPI, March 28).

In his letter to Kruse, he said he “[was] pleased that East Tennessee has engaged in outreach efforts to discuss project impacts and receive feedback from the affected communities, landowners and government officials,” but he indicated the Duke Energy pipeline needed to go even further. “The issues raised by the landowners in Virginia and Tennessee who are strongly opposed to the project must be addressed.”

The modified Patriot project, which would supply the gas needs of power generators in the region, entails an expansion of East Tennessee’s existing mainline system in Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, and an extension running from central Virginia to an interconnection with Transcontinental Gas Pipeline’s mainline in Rockingham County, NC. The extension is sized at 93 miles of 24-inch diameter pipeline, while the expansion consists of 85 miles of looping. In connection with the project, a salt cavern storage facility is being developed by parent Duke Energy Gas Transmission and NUI Corp. in Saltville, VA, to bring added value and options to shippers subscribing to the extended transportation services (see Daily GPI, June 28).

The $298 million extension-expansion is expected to boost East Tennessee’s existing design capacity of 700,000 Dth/d to more than 1.2 Bcf/d. The pipeline has proposed adding the capacity in three phases, with the initial in-service scheduled for May 2003.

East Tennessee previously estimated that 87% of the 510,000 Dth/d of capacity to be created by the Patriot project already has been subscribed under long-term agreements.

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