Second CA Merchant Storage Field Pushes Back Opening 
California's second merchant underground natural gas storage project near Sacramento began injecting supplies this month, but its commercial start-up date has been pushed back to Dec. 1, according to the California operations manager for Houston-based Western Hub Properties LLC, the developer. 
Although it is not fully subscribed more than half the capacity is under contract, according to Jim Fossum, the in-state manager for Western Hub, which was purchased last summer by a partnership of Aquila Inc and ArcLight Energy Partners Fund in a $220 million deal that is still several months away from approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. 
The Lodi Storage Project near the town of Lodi, CA, about 35 miles south of the state capital, will have "high-performance, quick-cycle-capabilities" in a project that stores 12 Bcf of natural gas with a 500 MMcf/d withdrawal rate and 400 MMcf/d injection rate. 
Fossum said Western Hub also is pursuing a second merchant storage project in the southern half of the state around Bakersfield in the Wheeler Ridge area close to the nexus of all the major interstate natural gas pipeline coming into California. That project, he said, is not included in the Aquila partnership purchase at this time, and will be developed initial by a still-to-be-named company using some of the same personnel that developed Lodi. 
The same group also has a potential storage site identified in Texas, near San Antonio.