Gentlemen,
In addition to looking for ways in which Transwestern can improve mainline deliverability, another important criteria is access to markets.  With the addition of the Calpine South Point project, we have delivery point capacity off the Topock Lateral approaching 1 Bcf/d.  However, we are currently limited to 400,000 Dth/d of capacity in the Topock Lateral itself.  Steve has asked us to look at what facilities/costs would be involved in increasing the deliverability of the Topock Lateral (no mainline capacity additions are implied, beyond the addition of Red Rock).

What would be the best/cheapest capacity additions we could make with respect to the Topock Lateral?  Drawing on my vast engineering expertise (ha,ha), it seems to me that with the directly connected power plant located approx. midway along the lateral line, wouldn't a compressor station immediately upstream of Calpine offer us the dual benefit of not only increased lateral capacity, but additional operating flexibility to meet the load curves for the plant?  Anyway, you guys are the experts, but we're asking that you look at a few cases and sketch out the associated costs of increasing the Topock Lateral capacity.  By way of suggested guidelines, I'd say that we'd like to see cases that provide for not less than 50 MMcf/d of incremental capacity, and not more than a doubling of the current line capacity (400 MMcf/d).  Again, its a cost/benefit sort of analysis, so we're really looking to key in on the cheapest, most economical capacity addition.

James, would you remain plugged in here, and given the information that Eric and/or Ben may provide, be prepared to give us some rate implications for this capacity addition?

Unless this creates too big a burden on your existing schedule of projects, can we set a deadline of March 30th with some Topock Lateral expansion cases along with costs/rates implications?  Please let me know.  If you need help with assumptions and/or need additional information, please give me a shout.  Thanks.