Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska held an open season in April, seeking bids for firm gas storage requiring an expansion to the company's Kenai facilities. The open season closed May 1, and CINGSA President John Sims told the Regulatory Commission of Alaska at a May 10 hearing that there were two responses, both from existing customers. He said CINGSA needed to do some analysis on what it can do to meet the requests but said he's not sure that CINGSA will be able to fill all of the requests. He said the company will provide the commission with an update.
In a back and forth with Commissioner Robert Pickett, Sims said additional storage is going to be required to meet Southcentral's ongoing natural gas needs and said that as supply in Cook Inlet declines, CINGSA won't be able to handle all the storage requirements. He said CINGSA was not designed as a facility able to meet all of Cook Inlet's deliverability needs.
Pickett recalled that when CINGSA was certified there was a question of whether it was the right facility, or was too small, but it was the best option at the time.
A snowy winter
Matthew Federle, CINGSA's director of storage operations in Kenai, reviewed winter activities at the facility for the commission.
The facility was constructed in 2011 and went into service in 2012 and can store 11 billion cubic feet of natural gas for customers with maximum deliverability of 150 million cubic feet.
He said the winter was a mild one as far as demand went for stored natural gas and the facility didn't set any records for outgoing flow and actually saw more injection in January and February than in the past.
Federle said snow removal was a huge problem at the facility over the winter because of the volume of snow. The presence of high pressure piping means the company can't use contractors operating equipment to remove snow, he said, and the work has to be done by CINGSA employees. Anything that could get buried by snow is marked in advance of the season, he said, calling it "an all-hands event when it snows."
Other than injections in January and February, things were pretty standard, Federle said, with the highest flow of natural gas on Easter Sunday.
- KRISTEN NELSON
