El Paso Puts Off Maintenance to Meet CA Demand

El Paso Natural Gas has decided to postpone what it called "routine" 
maintenance projects on its system in order to maintain the flow of natural 
gas into the California market to meet the surge in demand there. The higher 
demand has been created by a shortfall in energy imports from the Northwest 
region, which has been gripped by cold weather. 

The pipeline deferred indefinitely two maintenance projects on the South 
Mainline --- at Wenden Station in Arizona and the Wenden A turbine --- that 
were scheduled to take place today and Friday. It also deferred indefinitely 
work on the North Mainline at Hackberry 2 turbine in Arizona, which was to 
have occurred Dec. 10-17. 

If El Paso had gone forward with the maintenance projects, the company said 
throughput would have been cut by about 150 MMcf/d on its South Mainline, by 
50-75 MMcf/d on the Havasu Crossover, and by 80 MMcf/d on its North Mainline. 

The maintenance work at the Wenden Station, which is located on the south end 
of the Havasu Crossing, involved replacing batteries. "It has been agreed to 
by our operations people that those batteries are still in decent enough 
shape, [so] it's not a concern to continue running like this. And with the 
throughput situation and high gas prices [in California], it's in everybody's 
best interest that we not do this maintenance at this time," said Charlie 
Mathis, an administrator for pipeline control at El Paso. 

He estimated the El Paso system presently is running at 85-90% of the 
throughput level it had prior to the explosion near Carlsbad, NM, last 
August. That blast reduced the pipeline's operating capacity by 200 MMcf/d. 

Mathis said about 1.2 Bcf/d presently is being delivered into California over 
El Paso's South Mainline, and 1.5-1.7 Bcf/d is being delivered at Topock, AZ, 
over its North Mainline. 

In addition to the deferred maintenance projects, El Paso took a Waha GE 
turbine off line last Sunday to investigate a vibration problem. That has 
reduced capacity on the South Mainline by about 50 MMcf/d, said Mathis. He 
noted the turbine is scheduled to be back in service Friday. 

To offset the impact of the turbine outage on the market, El Paso decided to 
put off until this weekend work it had planned to do on Line 1100 between the 
Pecos River and the Guadalupe Stations --- a line that was affected by the 
explosion last August. The line will be taken out of service Dec. 8 and 
returned to service on Dec. 9, reducing the capacity of the South Mainline by 
50 MMcf/d each day. 

In the near term, El Paso is scheduled to run a smart pig through Line 3222 
on its North Mainline on Dec. 12, which will reduce capacity out of the San 
Juan Basin by about 50-100 MMcf/d, Mathis said. Pigging also is planned for 
Line 3201, which will cut capacity by about 150 MMcf/d. The reductions will 
affect points upstream of the Bondad Mainline and Gallup. 


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