A unit of Dominion Resources Inc. has asked federal regulators for permission to build a $40.6 million natural gas pipeline to push the fuel through four Western Pennsylvania counties and eventually to retail markets.
Dominion's Rural Valley project will move 57 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the Big Springs area of McKean County, through the Allegheny National Forest in Elk County, into Armstrong County near Rural Valley, with termination at the huge Oakford compressor station outside Delmont, Westmoreland County.
Dominion and Texas Eastern Transmission LP jointly own the Oakford compressor station/underground natural gas storage facility.
Total new pipeline to be laid for the project is just 1.3 miles, as much of the Rural Valley project uses existing Dominion pipe. The project includes a new compressor station in Armstrong County featuring 5,325 horsepower of natural gas-fired compression to push the gas south toward Oakford. It also includes natural gas measuring and regulating stations to be built in Rural Valley, in Elk and McKean counties, and a measuring station to be constructed at the Oakford facility.
In an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Dominion said the facilities are designed to create "additional outlets for the increased natural gas production in Western Pennsylvania."
That is a reference to the sharp ramp-up in natural gas being found, produced and readied for shipment from the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation under much of the state.
"We're going to be taking natural gas from our customers and getting it to market for them, or to their customer for delivery to market," said Dominion spokesman Robert Fulton.
The five natural gas producing companies that have signed contracts to take all the project's available capacity are Equitable Energy Inc., Seneca Resources Corp., a unit of National Fuel Gas Co., of Williamsville, N.Y., Kittanning-based independent natural gas producer/marketer Snyder Brothers Inc., and Dominion companies Dominion Field Services and Dominion Peoples.
Richmond, Va.-based Dominion has asked FERC to issue a final order approving the project by June 1, so that the pipeline can come on-line no later than Nov. 1, 2010.
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