his article presents and discusses six key Y= operational issues (Figure 1) that we encourage all industry participants to consider during the restructuring process. Some of these issues complement and are similar to the changes mandated by Order 636; others address operational activities at a more specific level of detail. All of the issues are essential for achieving an effective and efficiently operating national system for natural gas supply, transportation, and distribution.
Timely Access to Accurate Information
Operating in the post-636 environment requires "power tools" to enable producers, shippers, and end users to balance nominations to allocations. But these tools are useless without the "electricity" to power them. We believe this "electricity" is timely, accurate information.
The information must be timely, because daily balancing cannot be achieved unless all parties are working with the same daily allocated numbers. It also must be accurate, because nothing is quite as frustrating or tedious as working with bad data. Wet or dry, pressure base, PWPTR, fuel, heating value: If any of these items are misinterpreted, chaos develops. Balancing gas becomes impossible.
Just as electricity has a standard wattage in the United States, so should there be a standard language and format of information from which