![](media/image1.jpeg){width="8.5in"
height="3.5027777777777778in"}**U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY**

**Office of Energy Assurance**

**ENERGY ASSURANCE DAILY**

**February 23, 2004**

**Electricity**

#### Duke\'s S.C. Catawba 1 Nuke Shut

Duke Energy Co. manually shut its 1,129 megawatt Catawba 1 nuclear unit
in South Carolina on Feb 22 after a feedwater isolation valve failed,
the company told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an event report on
Monday. One of the \"steam generator feedwater isolation valves failed
closed with unit 1 at 100 percent power. Operators performed a manual
reactor trip as required by \... emergency procedures,\" the company
said in the report. Other than the failure of the valve, the company
said \"all plant safety systems operated as required.\" Duke said it
\"had identified a problem with the hydraulic motor associated with (the
failed valve) and was in the process of developing corrective actions
before the failure.\" On Friday, the unit was operating at full power.
Meanwhile, the adjacent 1,129 MW Catawba 2 nuclear power unit continued
to operate at full power.

Reuters, February 23, 7:56 am ET

<http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/040223/utilities_duke_catawba_1.html>

#### Exelon\'s Pa. Peach Bottom 2 Nuke Shut

Exelon Corp. manually shut its 1,110 megawatt Peach Bottom 2 nuclear
unit in Pennsylvania on Feb. 22 due to decreasing condenser vacuum, the
company told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an event report on
Monday. \"The reactor was manually scrammed due to degrading main
condenser vacuum. The reactor was manually scrammed prior to reaching
the automatic scram setpoint,\" the company said in the report. The
company noted that \"all plant systems responded as expected with no
significant issues noted.\" On Friday, the unit was operating at full
power. Meanwhile, the adjacent 1,110 MW unit 3 continued to operate at
full power. Meanwhile Exelon's 1,156-megawatt Limerick 1 nuclear plant
is entering a coast-down phase for scheduled refueling and maintenance.

Reuters, February 23, 7:51 am ET

Bloomberg

<http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/040223/utilities_exelon_peachbottom_1.html>

#### Other Nuclear Plants Out of Service

-   Entergy's 1,210-megawatt Grand Gulf 1 nuclear plant was taken
    off-line today for planned refueling and maintenance.

-   The 1,270 MW Unit 2 at the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona
    remained shut on Monday after being taken down on Thursday afternoon
    to repair a small leak in one of its two steam generators. A plant
    spokeswoman said on Monday that no estimate was yet available for
    when it will return to service.

-   Dominion\'s 921 megawatt North Anna 1 nuclear unit in Virginia, shut
    on the weekend to replace one of three main transformers (planned
    maintenance). A company spokesman said \"we expect a reasonably
    short outage\" but declined to say how long it will last.

Reuters, Bloomberg

# Power Plants Returning to Service on Monday

-   Entergy\'s 1,075 MW Waterford 3 nuclear unit in Louisiana was back
    at full power Monday. The plant had been briefly cut on Friday to
    repair a turbine valve.

-   California gas-fired units: the 775 MW Unit 2 at the Ormond Beach
    plant, the 336 MW Unit 4 at the Alamitos plant and the 330 MW Unit 5
    at the Encina plant.

-   Xcel Energy\'s 538 MW Prairie Island 1 nuclear unit in Minnesota
    returned to full power by early Monday after repairing a condenser
    tube leak.

-   CMS Energy\'s 789 MW Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan got back to
    full power by early Monday, the NRC said.

-   The 550 MW coal-fired Laramie River Unit 1 in Wyoming was back on
    the grid Monday after closing on the weekend for tube leak repairs.

-   Wisconsin Electric Power's Point Beach 1 515-megawatt nuclear plant
    returned to service after completing tests and scheduled
    maintenance.

-   Exelon's 1,147-megawatt LaSalle 1 nuclear plant is back up after
    being shut on Feb. 11 for scheduled refueling and maintenance.

Reuters, Bloomberg

**Petroleum**

#### Refiners' Feedstock Deliveries Delayed by River Closure

Deliveries of intermediate feedstocks to refiners on the Mississippi
River have been delayed by a weekend boat accident that blocked the
primary shipping channel linking the river to the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf
Coast trading sources say. The Mississippi River was closed Saturday as
the U.S. Coast Guard searched for five missing crew members after the
vessel they were on sank following a collision with another boat near
Pilottown, La. A spokesman with the U.S. Coast Guard said that the river
is still closed. The Lee III, a 178-foot offshore-platform supply ship,
was carrying about 30,000 gallons of diesel fuel when it collided with
Zim Mexico III at about 5:30 a.m. Saturday under heavy fog. The Lee III
capsized and sank. Contracted salvage vessels, equipment and personnel
were sent to the scene of the accident, but the U.S. Coast Guard said
clearing the blockage would begin only after the search for the crew had
concluded. What\'s known as the South West Pass is closed, and ships too
big for alternate routes are waiting to enter. Gulf Coast sources report
estimates that as many as 70 vessels are in line waiting to enter the
river. At least one cargo of vacuum gasoil (VGO) is said to be among the
vessels delayed. Barge movements of VGO and naphtha are not expected to
be hampered. And the operations of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port
(LOOP) are not expected to be affected, meaning that the offloading of
crude oil tankers can continue. Thirty-two ships were waiting to enter
Southwest Pass and 25 are waiting to depart, the Coast Guard said. That
number was expected to climb to between 80 and 90 ships by mid-week.

OPIS Price Watch Alert, Reuters

NIPC link: <http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2414477>

#### Tesoro Martinez Refinery Units Still Down

Trading sources said that Tesoro will keep a 53,000 b/d fluidic
catalytic cracker (FCC) and a 35,000 b/d hydrocracker down at its
170,000 b/d Martinez refinery for two to three weeks. A Tesoro
spokesperson said that the company is conducting a thorough
investigation and will be bringing units back online quickly but at the
same time insuring safety, but did not have specifics about individual
units. On Friday a power failure lead to the shutdown of these two
units. The company had hoped to have the units restarted by today,
sources said, but lingering effects from the loss of power last week
have kept it out of service. The company was able to restart the 48,000
b/d coker unit at the plant and crude runs will remain reduced during
the maintenance.

OPIS Price Watch Alert

Reuters, February 23, 2004 2:31 PM

#### Marathon shuts reformer for 5 days at Texas plant

Marathon Ashland Petroleum on Monday shut for an expected five days a
reformer unit at its 76,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Texas City,
Texas, according to the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. The
purpose of this maintenance activity is to put the repaired Platformer
Combined Feed Heater back online, which requires a shutdown to do so,\"
the Commission said on its web site. The plant has a reforming capacity
of 11,000 bpd. Reformers are used for producing high-octane gasoline
components.

Reuters, February 23, 11:06 am ET

<http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040223/energy_marathon_refinery_1.html>

#### Oil Rises, Buoyed by Refinery Problem

World oil prices rose on Monday as an outage at a large U.S. refinery
added to the jitters over potential gasoline shortages that have kept
fund money pouring into the energy markets. London benchmark Brent crude
futures stood 20 cents higher to \$30.89 a barrel, while U.S. light
crude futures were 16 cents up to \$34.42 a barrel. Shell Oil shut units
at its 340,000 barrels per day (bpd) oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas on
Sunday due to a technical problem, regulators said. Another refinery,
Marathon\'s 76,000 bpd plant was also shut on Monday. The outages served
to add to worries that supplies of gasoline would be inadequate to meet
demand later this year, given the high prices, tight supplies of crude
and an April 1 cut in OPEC supplies. Inventories of gasoline in the
United States, which consumes about 40 percent of the world\'s motor
fuel in summer, are running about nine million barrels under averages
for this time of the year.

Reuters 12:51 23Feb2004

#### Shell\'s Deer Park, Texas, Refinery Cuts Runs

Shell Oil Co. said Monday it shut several units at its 340,000
barrel-per-day oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas, early Sunday. \"An
operational problem with Shell Deer Park refinery\'s sulfur recovery
system on Sunday morning has temporarily impacted several processing
units,\" the company said in an e-mail. The company said the plant\'s
coker was \"at reduced rates until Tuesday.\" A notice from the Texas
Natural Resource Conservation Commission\'s Web site said the unit\'s
production was reduced to 55,000 bpd. The \"cat cracker returns to
normal rates today,\" Shell said Monday. The TNRCC site said the unit
had also reduced rates to 55,000 bpd. The company\'s e-mail said:
\"Distilling Unit-2 at reduced rates until Tuesday; 4 sulfur recovery
units at normal rates; 2 others to be brought online as needed.
Distillate hydrotreater at normal rates.\" In addition, the
hydrodesulfurization unit went down on Sunday night for about three
weeks of planned maintenance, the company said. The gas oil hydrotreater
was at normal rates.

Reuters 11:11 23Feb2004

#### BP's Alaskan Oil Field Resumes Production

BP Plc, the largest oil and natural-gas producer in North America, said
production from its Northstar oil field in Alaska resumed yesterday
after a two-week halt for repairs. The field is currently pumping at a
reduced rate of 40,000 to 45,000 barrels a day, said Daren Beaudo, a BP
spokesman in Anchorage. \`\`It usually takes a few days to warm up the
wells and get back to normal production,\'\' he said. The Northstar
field normally produces 72,000 barrels of oil a day. The company halted
production on Feb. 8 because of problems with the motor in the
gas-injection compressor. BP replaced the 26,000-pound motor. The
compressor reinjects gas pumped from the field into the reservoir to
maintain pressure and allow oil to be extracted from the 20 wells in the
Northstar field, Beaudo said. The field is located six miles offshore
Alaska and holds an estimated 175 million barrels of recoverable oil
reserves. Based on its interest in Alaska\'s fields, BP pumps 330,000
barrels a day. Production from the Northstar field accounts for about 22
percent of the company\'s Alaskan oil production.

Bloomberg

**Natural Gas**

#### El Paso Corp. reduces proven reserves

Shares of El Paso Corp. dropped 10 percent Wednesday as investors
responded to a \$1 billion charge the company must take after slashing
its estimated proven reserves of natural gas by nearly 35 percent.
Houston-based El Paso, the nation\'s largest natural gas pipeline
operator, said the financial impact was moderated by high natural gas
prices. The revision to its proven reserves, released Tuesday after
markets closed, was not a total surprise because the company warned
investors earlier this month that it expected to make a \"material
negative revision.\" However, the revision exceeded what some analysts
had expected. The company reduced its reserve base by 1.8 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas, leaving it with 2.6 trillion cubic feet at the end
of 2003. At the beginning of 2003, El Paso said it had 5.2 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas. Proven reserves are a key estimate of a
company\'s potential to produce oil and natural gas.

Daily Energy Central News, Tulsa World

**Other News**

Nothing to report.

**Energy Prices**

+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
|                               | **Latest  | **Week    | **Year     |
|                               | (2        | Ago**     | Ago**      |
|                               | /23/04)** |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| **CRUDE OIL**                 | 35.61     | 34.51     | 36.76      |
|                               |           |           |            |
| **West Texas Intermediate     |           |           |            |
| US**                          |           |           |            |
|                               |           |           |            |
| \$/Barrel                     |           |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| **NATURAL GAS**               | 5.10      | 5.62      | 6.73       |
|                               |           |           |            |
| **Henry Hub**                 |           |           |            |
|                               |           |           |            |
| \$/Million Btu                |           |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+

> Source: Reuters

**This Week in Petroleum** from the Energy Information Administration
(EIA)

[*http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp*](http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp)

Updated on Wednesdays

**Weekly Petroleum Status Report** from EIA**\
**[*http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html*](http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html)

Updated after 1:00pm (Eastern time) on Wednesdays

**Natural Gas Weekly Update** from EIA

[*http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngw/ngupdate.asp*](http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngw/ngupdate.asp)

Updated after 2:00 pm (Eastern time) on Thursdays