By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Apr. 3�Falcon Gas Storage Co., Houston, has acquired the Hill-Lake natural gas storage facility 100 miles west of Dallas, Tex., in Eastland County from TXU Lone Star Pipeline Co., Dallas.
Operating as a single-cycle gas storage facility since the early 1960s, Hill-Lake has been used primarily to serve the Abilene market during the winter heating season.
Falcon plans to add more compression, retrofit surface facilities, and drill horizontal injection/withdrawal wells to transform the Hill-Lake facility into a high-deliverability, multi-cycle (HDMC) gas storage facility capable of 4-6 annual inventory cycles with peak withdrawal capacity of more than 300,000 MMbtu/d.
In addition, Falcon will construct a 16-mile, 20-in. high-pressure pipeline to connect the Hill-Lake facility with TXU Lone Star Pipeline Co.�s "X" line, as well as the North Texas Pipeline jointly owned by TXU Fuels Co. and El Paso Natural Gas Co.
These two major 36-in. gas transmission pipelines traverse the energy corridor from the Waha Hub in West Texas to the Carthage Hub in East Texas.
Hill-Lake will enable Falcon to provide storage services to gas utilities and marketers serving the residential, commercial, and industrial loads in Dallas and surrounding areas. In addition, Hill-Lake can supply gas-fired electric generating facilities being built along the Waha-Carthage corridor.