PUC hearing highlights Spear Canal supply project, Aurora buildout and new-business risk
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
Company testimony to the Colorado PUC detailed drivers of the proposed Spear Canal interconnects, including Supply 0.1 reliability, projected new-business loads in Aurora, and trade-offs about building pipeline extensions now versus the risk that large conceptual developments might electrify later.
At a long hearing on Jan. 20, company witnesses defended the proposed Spirit/Spear Canal interconnects as a response to a projected supply reliability risk and to an expected closure of a local gas-processing supplier known in the record as "Supply 0.1." Grace Jones, manager of gas strategic planning, told the Public Utilities Commission that roughly two-thirds of the current reliability shortfall is driven by routine forecasted growth and large new-business requests, and that the company sized the Spear Canal project to address those constraints.
Jones said the company included an Aurora new-business build-out (about 25,000 homes and an estimated 3,000 MSCFH design-day demand for full build-out) in hydraulic modeling to ensure the Spear Canal interconnects would be sized appropriately, but she also confirmed most of that Aurora load remains conceptual rather than under contract. Jones said the company did not apply probability-weighted discounts or other adjustments to reflect the risk that the Aurora load may not materialize or may be electrified in the long term; she emphasized an obligation to serve formal requests that are under contract.
On supply risk, Jones said the company learned in 2024 that the owner-operator of Supply 0.1 expected closure; the company says its contract with that supplier requires only short notice (30 or 90 days) and therefore it decided to proceed with a multi-component interconnect project rather than rely on the at-risk supply. The Spear Canal package includes interconnections, a regulator station, meter relocation and other components the company says will preserve service if Supply 0.1 ceases to deliver.
Commissioners and intervenors pressed the company on whether it analyzed scenarios where portions of Aurora do not hook to gas service or later decommission gas appliances, and Jones said the company had not run a sensitivity quantifying stranded-asset risk for Aurora's long depreciation life but that the pipeline is required to serve contracted requests and an extension is needed today for customers who have asked for gas service.
The company also acknowledged it had not sought to buy the land where a receipt meter station currently sits on the supplier's property and said it plans to relocate and rebuild metering on company-owned land as part of the project.