Gas pipeline firm looking for takers in Northeast

CNY Business Journal (1996+), May 18, 2001

HOUSTON - Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. is offering access to natural-gas supplies from the Gulf Coast region, western Canada, and regional storage facilities, including the Stagecoach storage field currently under construction in Owego as part of a project it recently made public.

Shippers of natural gas are being solicited by the company, a subsidiary of El Paso Corp. (NYSE: EPG), for its Northeast ConneXion Project, which will involve expanding both storage and pipeline capacity in the company's Northeast markets. Tennessee is looking to hear from would-be participants between now and the end of May. The actual size of the project, the company says, will depend on the interest it receives.

"The Northeast ConneXion Project is our answer to the market's call for increased access to Gulf Coast natural-gas supplies and additional storage service to meet the growing demand in the New York region," said Stephen C. Beasley, president of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company. "Both new and existing shippers will benefit from it."

The project includes two primary components - an expansion of Tennessee's market area storage in Pennsylvania and an expansion of its downstream pipeline capacity from this storage area to the New York City joint facilities and to growing markets in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The storage expansion of up to five billion cubic feet could provide as much as 300,000 dekatherms per day of incremental deliverability and will serve as the base load for the pipeline expansion.

Interested shippers can contact Bob Bookstaber at (713) 4203158, or Joe Wyzik at (713) 420-4258 to obtain additional information and the open season participation form.

El Paso Corp., a broad-based natural gas company, has an enterprise value in excess of $50 billion. The company owns and operates a significant portion of the North American natural-gas delivery grid, operates an energy merchant group, and is the nation's third largest naturalgas producer.

eCORP, a Houston-based energy company, is building a gasstorage facility on a former natural-gas field near Owego. The project has been named the Stagecoach Compression Facility.