TULSA, Okla., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Williams Partners L.P. today provided an update on the status of its Ignacio Gas Processing plant following the fire at the facility earlier today.
This morning around 3:30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, a cooling tower at the plant caught fire, damaging it and a few adjacent buildings. The plant has been shut down and the fire has been extinguished. There were no injuries as a result of this incident.
The Ignacio plant is part of Williams Four Corners LLC, which is owned by Williams Partners. Williams operates the facility, which is located near Durango, Colo., and has a processing capacity of approximately 450 million cubic feet per day (MMcfe).
The partnership and Williams have re-routed approximately 100 MMcfe of the plant's normal production capacity to other facilities in the San Juan Basin and continue to work on re-routing additional production capacity. In addition to the Ignacio plant, the Four Corners gathering system is connected to the Kutz and Lybrook natural gas processing plants and the Milagro and Esperanza natural gas treating plants in northwestern New Mexico. The Four Corners system's normal volumes are in excess of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfe) and approximately 350 MMcfd has been affected as a result of this outage.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is under investigation. Following a thorough assessment of damages and an analysis that includes the expected mitigating effect of its property-damage and business-interruption insurance, Williams Partners will announce an estimated repair time and any projected effect on fourth-quarter results.
About Williams Partners L.P.
Williams Partners L.P. is a publicly traded master limited partnership that owns natural gas gathering, transportation, processing and treating assets serving regions where producers require large scale and highly reliable services, including the Gulf of Mexico and the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and Colorado. The partnership also serves the natural gas liquids (NGL) market through its NGL fractionating and storage assets. The general partner is Williams Partners GP LLC. More information about the partnership is available at http://www.williamslp.com.
Contact: Jeff Pounds Williams (media relations) (918) 573-3332 Julie Gentz Williams (media relations) (918) 573-3053 Sharna Reingold Williams (investor relations) (918) 573-2078
This press release may include "forward-looking statements" as defined by federal law. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that the Partnership expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on certain assumptions made by the Partnership based on its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Partnership, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the forward-looking statements. Additional information about issues that could lead to material changes in performance is contained in the Partnership's annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
