Hope reaches settlement in first phase of plan to abandon Red Lines
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MORGANTOWN - Hope Gas has reached a settlement in the first phase of its effort to abandon some "Red Lines" acquired from other producers, and submitted the proposal to the Public Service Commission for its approval.
Hope’s Wednesday filing shows that it has reached a "joint stipulation and agreement" with PSC staff, the PSC’s Consumer Advocate Division, the Diversified Gas & Oil Corp., and Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage.
Among the stipulations in the agreement, Hope is authorized to remove the Category 1 Red Lines from service, pending a PSC order. It shall not begin removal of lines supplying a free-gas user before April 1, 2027.
If a Red Line has an interconnection with an active producer pipeline or well or has a farm-tap customer connected to it, Hope will not take that pipeline out of service and will report back to and file with the PSC seeking appropriate further authorizations.
Hope may convey and transfer a Category 1 Red Line to any interested party without Hope having to seek any additional prior PSC authorizations; but any associated cost recovery must be approved by the PSC.
Producers involved in arrangements with a free-gas user shall address their arrangements directly with the free-gas user.
The question of whether Hope may recover in its annual Pipeline Replacement and Expansion Program filings its costs for capital investments to remove and retire Category 1 Red Lines from service is not resolved in this agreement and will be addressed in other filings.
Hope acquired a total 2,854 miles of lines from Equitrans and Dominion Gathering. About 1,180 miles are red lines with 467 farm tap customers, 285 producers and 291 free gas customers.
The Category 1 lines covered in this agreement - 32 miles with no farm tap customers and no connected producers - have 16 free gas customers. The Category 1 Red Lines are located in 13 counties: Monongalia, Marion, Barbour, Braxton, Calhoun, Doddridge, Gilmer, Harrison, Lewis, Ritchie, Taylor, Upshur and Wetzel.
Hope plans to address the other Red Line categories in future filings: Category 2, one producer per line (12 total) and no farm taps, 32 free gas customers, 68 miles; Category 3, 112 producers and no farm taps, 69 free gas customers, 339 miles; Category 4, 161 producers, 467 farm tap customers, 174 free gas customers, 741 miles.
Hope originally proposed in August 2024 to abandon about 1,069 miles of Red Lines because they are no longer necessary or useful and that providing safe, reliable, economic service to the farm-tap customers along those lines was in jeopardy because existing service is either unsafe, unreliable, uneconomical or any combination of the three.
The case was put on hold for a while. On April 24, Hope filed a new case with this more narrow and phased approach to the problem.