RCA sets service area for CINGSA
Responding to a petition from Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska, requesting a change to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska’s Dec. 17 order that granted a certificate for CINGSA’s planned gas storage facility on the Kenai Peninsula, RCA has approved a service area for the facility, in the Sterling C sands of the Cannery Loop gas field on the south side of the city of Kenai. In an order issued Dec. 30 the commission has also dropped a stipulation that if CINGSA had not by Dec. 30 acquired the necessary property rights for operating the facility the commission would have cancelled an upcoming hearing to review testimony on the facility’s tariff.
The commission’s Dec. 17 order had not spelled out the storage facility’s service area, but had merely required the facility to be in reasonable proximity to the Cook Inlet natural gas pipeline system. Without a specified service area CINGSA would not have the power of eminent domain over the land that it requires for the facility. And, given the 45 individual landowners with rights in the land that CINGSA needs, the absence of eminent domain authority would make it all but impossible to negotiate workable deals with all of the relevant property owners, thus making the RCA certificate unusable in practice, CINGSA had said in its petition.
The tariff hearing will now proceed, starting on Jan.7 and lasting until Jan. 14. CINGSA is trying to fast track development of its facility, to head off an otherwise likely Southcentral Alaska utility gas shortfall in the winter of 2012-13.
—Alan Bailey
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