Bobcat Gas Storage, owned by Haddington Energy Partners III LP and GE Energy Financial Services, has started up operations at its natural gas storage facility in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, US. Bobcat began providing storage services to its customers on 1 November 2008 after nearly 3 years of planning, permitting, and construction. The cavern is fully subscribed with customers. Each cavern is fully surrounded by salt and begins at about 4500ft beneath the surface and extends to nearly 6000ft. The storage project provides access to gas from Louisiana and Texas – including the Barnett shale – and from the Gulf of Mexico. The site interconnects with five major interstate pipelines, namely Florida Gas Transmission Co., Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Corp., ANR Pipeline Co., and Gulf South Pipeline Co. The site’s initial capacity is nearly 5.4 billion cu/ft of working gas, which is planned to be increased to 10.3 billion cu/ft by third-quarter 2009 when a second cavern, currently under construction, is completed and starts up. Capacity will expand to 15.6 billion cu/ft by yearend 2009 after the full build-out.