News

On April 13, 2000, Pacific Gas and Electric Company's California Gas Transmission will implement Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with Kern River Pipeline (KRP). CGT and KRP are currently conducting systems testing and final implementation is planned for April 13, gas day April 14.

Transitioning to EDI

Shippers will have a one-week transition period, from April 6 through April 12, to become familiar with the procedures necessary for EDI implementation with KRP. During this week CGT and KRP will use EDI to schedule gas. However, CGT's Scheduling group and KRP will review timely cycle nominations between the two pipelines and manually overwrite any mismatched nominations.

The pipelines will review evening and intraday nominations on a best efforts basis only. If any nominations have been manually overwritten, CGT will notify the affected customers by telephone and advise them to correct any nominations still in place for future cycles or dates.

On April 13 for gas day April 14, CGT and KRP will cease manual verification of nominations between the two pipelines.

Implementation for Forward Haul Only

At this time, EDI implementation will occur only for forward haul transactions (receipts from KRP delivered to Pacific Gas and Electric Company). Backhauls (deliveries from Pacific Gas and Electric Company to KRP) will use the current manual process until Pacific Gas and Electric Company implements EDI for downstream deliveries. This is expected in the third quarter of 2000.

How to Ensure Nomninations Match

EDI implementation requires that all nomination information between interconnecting pipelines match exactly. Please refer to the following hints to ensure that nominations match under the new EDI protocols.

Monitor and Match

Shippers should carefully monitor information from both pipelines to ensure that nominations on INSIDEtracc and Rapids II (KRP's system) match.

DUNS Numbers

When nominating, Pacific Gas and Electric Company shippers do not manually enter DUNS numbers in INSIDEtracc. This will not change with EDI implementation. However, shippers must understand that INSIDEtracc will pass DUNS numbers back to Rapids II. Shippers must know the DUNS numbers used by INSIDEtracc and enter the same DUNS numbers when nominating on Rapids II.

To learn the DUNS number of a downstream nominating partner, that nominating partner must be contacted directly. Pacific Gas and Electric Company representatives are not at liberty to give out this information.

Shippers on the Pacific Gas and Electric Company system may check their own DUNS number directly from INSIDEtracc by selecting Navigate, Contracts, Customer. Once at the Customer screen, select Search and then Retrieve from the buttons at the top of the screen.

Because Pacific Gas and Electric Company does not require its end-use customers to obtain DUNS numbers, nominations going directly from a TSA to an end-use customer are automatically assigned a fictitious DUNS number of '999-99-9999.' Nominations made directly to a Pacific Gas and Electric Company end-use customer must include a matching '999-99-9999' DUNS number in Rapids II. If this number is not included, the nominations will be unmatched and cut to zero.

Package IDs

Shippers may continue to nominate using package IDs, an optional field in INSIDEtracc. However, pipeline-to-pipeline transactions between CGT and KRP are not performed at the package ID level. For this reason, package IDs are not one of the elements matched by the EDI process.

INSIDEtracc aggregates multiple nominations by source and destination contract and then transmits this single aggregated volume to Rapids II. Shippers must ensure that the volume nominated from a TSA to a downstream contract on Rapids II matches the aggregated total from INSIDEtracc. If the volumes do not match, the 'lesser of' rule will apply.

Questions

If you have any questions about EDI implementation, please contact your CGT Account Services Representative or Scheduling Representative.