Gas Alberta Inc. and its customers add tremendous value to Alberta’s rural industrial sector by providing gas transportation service for large industrial consumers, such as those operating in the oil, gas and forestry sectors. This service enables industrial consumers to supply natural gas to their facilities that they have either produced at another location or procured through a third party.

For an industrial consumer to qualify for gas transportation service in a rural utility franchise area, their annual usage must exceed 10,000 gigajoules (GJs) and they cannot not be classified as a farming operation. If these criteria are met and capacity is available on the gas transmission pipeline, the industrial consumer can elect for gas transportation service through the following process:

  • Gas Alberta and the industrial consumer will jointly sign an Exchange Agreement to initiate gas transportation service.
  • Gas Alberta will post a daily Nova Inventory Transfer (NIT) with the industrial consumer or its agent using the estimated daily demand provided by the rural utility. The NIT will transfer the required daily gas volume from the consumer or agent’s account to Gas Alberta’s account.
  • Gas Alberta will deliver the NIT gas received on a daily basis to the rural utility’s meter station for re-delivery to the industrial consumer.
  • The rural utility will provide Gas Alberta with the industrial consumer’s actual monthly usage in order to determine the imbalance between the daily NITs and the actual usage for a given month.
  • Monthly imbalance amounts above a set volume threshold are recovered through a secondary, 5-day NIT transfer process.
  • Monthly imbalance amounts below the threshold are transferred to the industrial consumer’s cumulative imbalance account. A 5-day NIT transfer process is triggered once the imbalance account exceeds the set volume threshold.
  • Gas Alberta may request more frequent measurement information from the rural utility which can be used to adjust the industrial consumer's daily NITs in order to ensure the monthly imbalance amount is minimized.
  • An Exchange Statement that captures all NITs, imbalances, and adjustments is provided by Gas Alberta to the industrial consumer on a monthly basis.