The planning comes less than three years after the $283 million Guardian pipeline began service; this 230-km line connects Milwaukee to the major natural gas hub at Joliet, Ill. "We're 98% subscribed," said Guardian president Rich Gielecki. "What caught some people by surprise is how quickly capacity in the state was utilized." A decision on whether to build a new pipeline will be made later this summer. Three Wisconsin utilities have solicited proposals for a pipeline that would be built by late 2008. The cost and route for the pipeline are still to be determined: so far, the utilities have not identified which companies submitted proposals to build the pipeline. Gielecki said Guardian has proposed to build an expansion and extension of its line, and is one of the companies in the running. "We are definitely interested, and we have bid into that and continue to be part of that process," he said. "We would have a system expansion on our existing system and then extend our pipeline northeasterly from Ixonia to Green Bay." Guardian was built by a partnership led by Wicor Inc., the parent of Wisconsin Gas before it was bought by Wisconsin Energy Corp. five years ago. Guardian's joint owners today are Wisconsin Energy, Viking Gas Transmission and WPS Resources Corp., the parent of Wisconsin Public Service Corp The utilities that want to expand the amount of natural gas coming into eastern Wisconsin are Milwaukee-based We Energies, Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp., and Wisconsin Power & Light Co., of Madison. Proposals for a new pipeline were first solicited by the three utilities in November, with the goal of "increasing the physical pipeline capacity available to the state of Wisconsin, and increasing access to competitively priced supplies and services," WPS said. The request for proposals came in the same year that prices for more than half of We Energies' natural gas customers were increased by about $2 a month to help pay for a lateral pipe that connects Guardian with the former Wisconsin Gas system in Brookfield and Germantown. The 61-km $97.5-million project, dubbed the Ixonia lateral, opened in late 2003. An alternative to building a new pipeline would be continuing to work with ANR Pipeline Co., which has a major pipeline network in eastern Wisconsin, to expand its system. Since 2003, ANR has invested $127 million in various projects in Wisconsin to help respond to increasing demand for the fuel, from both customer growth and the construction of new electric power plants fuelled by natural gas. Its projects, located in the Fox River Valley, Port Washington area, Madison area, and Janesville area, and in the far northeast of Wisconsin, have involved expansions achieved by replacing smaller-diameter pipes with larger ones, predominantly through use of existing pipeline rights-of-way, said Gary Charette, ANR vice president of business development. The company has also built new compression stations that increase the pressure of the gas in the pipeline and allow more gas to be transported at a time. ANR advocates a 'just-in-time approach' to expanding natural gas capacity, rather than construction of a major new pipeline. "We don't think it makes sense to build something five or 10 years before the (demand) shows up, if ever," Gary Charette. "We think this incremental approach beats all the other alternatives." But the Guardian project was built in response to a request for proposals similar to the one issued last fall, said Gielecki of Guardian. The pipeline was endorsed by state customer groups and regulators as a way to provide increased competition in the business of delivering gas to the state from Illinois, a natural gas pipeline hub. Bob Whitefoot, manager of gas supply for We Energies, said the utility is in discussions with ANR and others about the most effective way to expand the state's natural gas supply. "We're trying to determine what would be the best solution for our customers, what would be the best pricing to bring additional capacity into the state, three to five years from now," he said.