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Coordination needed for Southcentral grid Kenai Beluga Pipeline filing shows that area utilities will need to work together to meet their needs during coldest days of the year Eric Lidji For Petroleum News
It may take more than regulations to keep the Southcentral natural gas transmission system operating smoothly during cold snaps, according to one pipeline operator.
“Good will and cooperative efforts by affected stakeholders may be necessary to ensure that available capacity is allocated appropriately to the most critical needs in the particular circumstances that may prevail at the time a constraint occurs,” Kenai Beluga Pipeline LLC Pipeline Manager Richard Novcaski wrote in a recent regulatory filing.
The filing listed the “Peak Day High Priority Use” of the eight companies that use the pipeline to ship natural gas around the Cook Inlet region. The report measures the maximum amount of gas each shipper required on any given day between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014. The filing is a requirement of a settlement agreement that allowed a Hilcorp subsidiary to consolidate four existing pipelines into a single administrative unit.
Question around maximum needs The filing aims to understand whether the consolidated pipeline could effectively respond if all its “high-priority” customers requested their maximum needs, all at once. “A very high proportion of KBPL’s throughput is for utility and other high priority needs. As a result, it may not be possible, by means of a tariff rule, to provide for meeting all of such needs during a capacity constraint,” Novcaski told the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
Combined, the eight shippers required more than 323 million cubic feet per day on their peak day during the previous year. Enstar Natural Gas Co. was the largest at more than 227.6 million cubic feet. The smallest was Agrium Inc., at 80,000 cubic feet. The numbers will likely be even higher when Kenai Beluga Pipeline revises the report again in a few months to account for the new Matanuska Electric Association Inc. power plant.
The six other “high priority” shippers are Alaska Electric & Energy Cooperative Inc., Chugach Electric Association Inc., Cook Inlet Energy LLC, Hilcorp Alaska LLC, Municipal Light and Power and Tesoro Alaska Co. LLC. The pipeline also serves ConocoPhillips Alaska Natural Gas Corp. and Homer Electric Association Inc.
The pipeline is merely one component of the larger Southcentral grid and not the only source of supplies. But its size - uniting the former Kenai Nikiski Pipeline, Kenai Kachemak Pipeline, Cook Inlet Gas Gathering System and Beluga Pipeline - makes it an important entity when considering the health of the regional transmission grid.
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