FERC Requests More Evidence on Gas Leaks
A March 24 letter from FERC Staff gives WGL until April 3 to submit additional evidence to support its assertion that LNG regasified at Dominion’s Cove Point LNG terminal is responsible for deteriorating the couplings used in its distribution system and causing a number of leaks in its service area. In particular, the agency asks the utility to “explain and discuss in detail how Washington Gas could ignore the impacts that both variation in normal operating pressures and daily temperatures would have on compression coupling leak rates.” FERC also issued letters seeking data from Norton McMurray Manufacturing, the company that supplied WGL with the pipeline fittings in question, and seeking from KeySpan a New York Public Service Commission report from the early 1990s addressing a similar occurrence of leaks on the Long Island Lighting Co. distribution system. WGL’s leaks allegations were the subject of a procedural conference at FERC on February 22. The letters are available in the FERC e-Library in Docket No. CP05-130.