State approves CINGSA’s plan for 2019

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas has approved Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska’s plan of development for 2019. The plan anticipates carrying out of maintenance and some small projects at the facility, south of the city of Kenai on the Kenai Peninsula. In an earlier version of the plan, CINGSA had anticipated conducting a significant project to add some redundant features to the facility, to mitigate the risk of some existing component of the facility failing. However, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska declined to pre-approve the technical prudence of the project, thus exposing CINGSA to the risk that it might not be possible to obtain approval to recover the project cost through the rates that it charges its customers.

The facility provides a vital service to power and electric utilities in Southcentral Alaska by enabling the utilities to warehouse gas when gas production exceeds demand, thus making stored gas available for use when gas demand peaks. CINGSA enjoys a strong reputation for the reliability of its services and the RCA was not convinced that the company had provided compelling reasons for conducting the upgrade project.

According to the approved plan of development, CINGSA injected 6.1 billion cubic feet of gas into storage and withdrew 4.3 billion cubic feet in 2018. The company used coiled tubing to clean sand out of one of the facility’s wells, and perforations were added to the well. Sand monitoring equipment was added to two other wells. The facility has five wells, all of which can be used to inject gas into the subsurface storage reservoir or to withdraw gas from the reservoir for delivery to customers.

- ALAN BAILEY