News

The Mojave District Air Board has recently changed the emission regulations at PG&E’s California Gas Transmission Hinkley compressor station. As a result of the change, CGT will need to change how we operate the station. The change will impact the capacity of the Baja Path at times.

The Hinkley compressor station consists of twelve (12) gas-driven reciprocating compressor units. Some units have been retrofitted with expensive equipment to reduce the amount of NOx emitted during operations, others have not (five of the twelve are non-retrofitted units). The air board has reduced the number of hours the non-retrofitted units can run each year (the annual total hours reduced from 7,500 to 2,600 hours).

What are the implications for you, our customers?

• Gas Operations will need to manage the operation of the Hinkley units to ensure that we have sufficient hours to support system design conditions, unplanned outages and use at other critical times.
• Normal operating capacities at Hinkley will be based on available retrofitted units only
• Non-retrofitted units generally will not be used for day-to-day capacity support. The non-retrofitted units may be used on a limited basis for maintaining capacity during unplanned outages.
• The monthly Maximum Baja Path capacity will be slightly impacted: March-November at 1005 MMcf/day and December-February at 995 MMcf/day.

The daily Baja Path capacity may vary depending on the location and volume of receipts, deliveries, and pipeline inventory as well as changes due to maintenance and depending on the actual system conditions. The volume reflecting daily Baja path capacity is available in the Physical Pipeline Capacity table on Pipe Ranger.

CGT's objective is to optimize our flowing volumes to the greatest extent possible while remaining fully compliant with air board rule changes in effect.

Please contact Allen DeBrum at 925.244.3498 with any questions.