In case you haven't seen the trade press reports:

NGI's Daily Gas Price Index 
published : March 13, 2001
Kern Plans Emergency Expansion for California

In response to the "urgent" need for additional gas supplies to serve 
California's electric generation markets this summer, Kern River Gas 
Transmission has announced an emergency open season for 135,000 Dth/d firm 
transportation service expected to be available by July 1. 

"It would mean the fast track through FERC and getting all the environmental 
permits in three-and-a-half months," said spokeswoman Bev Chipman. "It would 
be quicker than ever before. We've already spoken with FERC. They are very 
interested, and we are very interested to entertain this possibility." 

FERC Chairman Curt Hebert told the House Energy and Air Quality subcommittee 
last week that the Commission was committed to moving rapidly on any projects 
designed to move gas to California. 

Williams, which already has one expansion on file and another on the way, is 
proposing this project as an emergency solution to California's power crisis. 
The $81 million project would be finalized by April 2 based on whether the 
necessary permits and licenses for construction have been obtained. Williams 
could cancel the project if expansion capacity is not fully subscribed. 

A portion of the emergency facilities may be incorporated into Williams' 2002 
California Expansion Project, which is currently on file at FERC, or its 2003 
New Generation Expansion Project, which recently underwent an open season. 
Several temporary facility installations would be removed once the other two 
permanent expansions were in place and in service. 

"In response to FERC and to the state of California we have located available 
compression equipment that we could have on site nearly immediately, and 
we've come up with a proposal to place those compression units on the very 
same sites we will be using for our permanent expansions," said Kirk Morgan, 
director of business development for Williams Gas Pipeline West. "FERC 
already has an application in front of them that deals with the site 
locations. These are different units so there are different air quality 
impacts, but we're hoping that those sites can be permitted very 
expeditiously...." Williams said the facilities would include modifications 
to three existing compressor stations, installation of three new compressor 
stations and expansion of a meter station. 

The open season only runs through noon Thursday. There are two blocks of 
capacity that will be available starting July 1: one for 110,000 Dth/d that 
runs through April 30, 2002 and another for 21,000 Dth/d that runs through 
April 30, 2003. Shippers interested in service should submit a request for 
service that includes the shipper's commitment to accept and Williams' 
commitment to provide firm transportation service that includes, among other 
things, an executed binding precedent agreement and a statement confirming 
the ability to meet Williams' creditworthiness in its FERC gas tariff and 
policy. Other requirements can be found on the web site at 
http://www.williams.com or by contacting Bev Chipman at (801)584-7048. 

I thought it was also interesting that, in the press release posted on the 
Williams web site, Kern says it will only entertain one request per customer 
for each of the two packages being offered.  Our usual strategy, I believe, 
is to submit several bids at different levels.