AOGCC OKs CINGSA pressure increase

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has approved an increase in the maximum allowed pressure in the Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska, or CINGSA, storage reservoir from 1,700 pounds per square inch to 2,200 pounds per square inch. The CINGSA facility provides gas storage services for Southcentral Alaska power and gas utilities, enabling the utilities to warehouse summer-produced gas to meet high winter gas demand.

CINGSA applied to the commission for an increase in the allowed pressure, following the discovery of a higher than expected pressure in the reservoir in the fall of 2013 and a determination that one of the facility’s wells had penetrated a previously unknown gas pocket in one of the underground sand bodies that form the reservoir.

CINGSA told the commission that, with the surprise gas pocket causing an unplanned 14.5 billion cubic feet of additional gas to flow through the facility’s reservoir, the storage facility could not meet its contracted storage obligations without increasing the reservoir pressure above the originally permitted maximum.

The facility uses reservoir sand bodies which originally formed part of the Cannery Loop gas field but which had become depleted of gas - the new permitted maximum pressure of 2,200 pounds per square inch approximately equals the reservoir pressure in the sands when the gas field was originally discovered. The new maximum would support CINGSA’s existing contracts while also allowing capacity for potential future expansion of the facility, CINGSA told the commission.

In an order issued on June 4 the commission accepted CINGSA’s request and explanation, and authorized the revised maximum pressure.

- Alan Bailey