TransCanada Working on Leach Xpress Pipe after W. Va. Incident

(Reuters) - TransCanada Corp’s Columbia Gas Transmission (TCO) unit said it was working on a section of the Leach Xpress natural gas pipeline downstream of an incident in West Virginia last week.

That work will enable the Stagecoach-Leach Xpress meter in southeast Ohio to return to service, according to a notice to customers late Tuesday.

The Stagecoach meter in Monroe County on the Ohio-West Virginia border connects to EQT Midstream Partners LP’s Strike Force South gathering fields in Monroe and Belmont counties in Ohio.

Strike Force can also deliver to Energy Transfer Partners LP’s Rover and Enbridge Inc’s Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) pipelines.

Columbia Gas said all other meters affected by the blast will remain at zero until the pipeline returns to service.

The company said did not say when the full pipe would return to service, noting the site of the incident is in the restoration process. Columbia Gas told customers it will provide an update on the status of the pipe on June 18.

The shutdown of Leach Xpress forced producers using the line to find other pipes to ship their gas out of the Marcellus and Utica shale regions of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

Alternative pipelines include ETP’s Rover, Tallgrass Energy Partners LP’s Rockies Express (REX), EQT Midstream Partners LP’s Equitrans and Enbridge’s Tetco, according to analysts at S&P Global Platts.

Columbia Gas, which declared a force majeure after the incident, said the damaged section of pipe could affect movement of about 1.3 Bcf/d.

The 1.5 Bcf/d Leach Xpress in West Virginia and Ohio, which entered full service at the start of this year, transports Marcellus and Utica shale gas to consumers in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast.

The 12,000-mile (19,312-km) Columbia pipeline system, which TransCanada acquired in 2016, serves millions of customers from New York to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Related News

Comments

{{ error }}
{{ comment.comment.Name }} • {{ comment.timeAgo }}
{{ comment.comment.Text }}