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Enstar to tie in new Susitna crossing KNPL needs temporary emergency certificate from RCA to move gas north to south on the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline Alan Bailey Petroleum News
On the weekend of March 11 Enstar Natural Gas Co. plans to tie its new pipeline crossing of the east channel of the Susitna River into its pipeline that carries natural gas from the west side of the Cook Inlet to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and Anchorage, Dan Dieckgraeff, Enstar’s manager of finance and rates, said at a Regulatory Commission of Alaska public hearing on March 9. (See map in related story in the Jan. edition of Petroleum News.)
Rapid erosion of the east channel of the river has forced Enstar to reposition the pipeline crossing in an operation that has involved a record-setting horizontal directional drill (see “Enstar to reposition pipeline crossing” in the Jan. 1 edition of Petroleum News).
Dieckgraeff explained that two main factors drove his company’s decision to tie in the pipeline crossing on the weekend of March 11: a forecast of relatively mild weather for that weekend and the need to complete the river crossing project in winter conditions.
Closing the Beluga pipeline during mild weather minimizes the disruption to gas supplies, because gas demand is lower than what it would be in colder weather. But the project must be completed in the winter, before ice roads melt, to meet mandated environmental constraints for operating in the wildlife refuge where the pipeline river crossing is located. Temporary shutdown Enstar needs to shut down the pipeline under the Susitna River during the tie-in operation, thus temporarily halting the flow of gas north from the west side of the inlet, Dieckgraeff said.
So, the company has made a complex arrangement with gas producers, pipeline owners and industrial gas users around the Cook Inlet to ship gas to Anchorage during the tie in, to ensure continuity of gas supplies for Enstar’s customers. Gas will flow south through the Beluga pipeline on the west side of the inlet and across the inlet through the Cook Inlet Gas Gathering System to Nikiski. The Kenai Nikiski pipeline will then connect gas supplies from Nikiski to the southern end of Enstar’s Kenai Peninsula pipeline that connects Kenai with Anchorage. That pipeline will maintain Anchorage gas supplies while the pipeline under the Susitna is closed.
“We are extremely appreciative of all of the parties in accommodating this planned outage,” Dieckgraeff told the RCA commissioners. Not authorized There’s just one problem. Authorized services on the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline do not include the north to south transportation of gas — the pipeline was built to carry natural gas to Nikiski from fields on the west side of the Kenai Peninsula. And Kenai Nikiski Pipeline, a subsidiary of Marathon Oil Co., is proposing to carry the gas free of charge on the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline during the period of the crossing tie in.
“The settlement agreement we’re operating under right now doesn’t really contemplate free service,” David Robinson, attorney for KNPL, told the commissioners.
So, Enstar would like RCA authorization for this special use of the Kenai Nikiski line.
“The duration of this (crossing tie in) is expected to be about 12 hours on Sunday,” Dieckgraeff said.
So, Enstar and KNPL proposed that RCA issue a temporary emergency certificate for the north to south transportation on the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline.
“Our concept is that the cleanest way to do this is to for us to request a temporary emergency certificate, which would allow a north to south service at no charge for the duration (of the tie in),” Robinson said. RCA concurs The commissioners concurred with this proposal and asked that by 1 p.m. on March 9 KNPL submit a request for the temporary certificate. They also asked for an affidavit testifying that all companies affected by the proposed routing of the gas are in agreement with what is proposed.
Curiously, despite the necessity of obtaining a temporary emergency certificate, it is unlikely that any physical gas will actually pass north to south through the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline. Dieckgraeff explained to Petroleum News that the actual gas delivered to the Enstar pipeline on the Kenai Peninsula would come from gas delivered to the south end of the Kenai Nikiski Pipeline. Gas coming from the west side of the Inlet would be delivered to customers at the north end of the pipeline, in lieu of the gas that they would normally receive from the south end.
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