CINGSA applies for certificate amendment

Having received approval from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for an increase in the maximum allowed reservoir pressure in its Kenai Peninsula gas storage facility, Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska Inc., or CINGSA, has applied to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska for a corresponding modification to the facility’s certificate of public convenience and necessity.

CINGSA’s current certificate restricts the reservoir pressure to 1,700 pounds per square inch - CINGSA wants that limit raised to 2,200 pounds per square inch. In an application received by the commission on June 6, CINGSA said that it cannot meet all of its contractual obligations for gas storage services without allowing the reservoir pressure to exceed the original limit. The requested new limit of 2,200 pounds per square inch corresponds to the pressure in the reservoir, when the reservoir was discovered as part of the Cannery Loop gas field. Production from the field resulted in depletion of gas in the reservoir and the subsequent availability of the reservoir for gas storage.

CINGSA says that the requested change has no associated costs.

The need for the pressure increase arises from a discovery that one of the wells in the storage facility had penetrated a previously unknown gas pocket from the original gas field. The gas from that pocket has flowed into the reservoir, occupying storage capacity that would otherwise have been used for the storage of gas for CINGSA’s customers. Consequently, to accommodate all of the gas that CINGSA is committed to store, it will be necessary to raise the gas pressure above the level that had originally been planned for the facility, CINGSA says.

- Alan Bailey