Calpine CEO Peter Cartwright said last week that the merchant power company has become the nation’s single largest gas consumer and remains on the lookout for additional gas producing properties to support its growing fleet of power plants.

“We’re looking to expand our sources of natural gas throughout the Lower 48 states and Canada,” he said. “Those supplies are being depleted over time, and the country needs to find new sources of gas.” He said Calpine was actively interested in both North Slope Alaskan gas supplies and imported supplies via liquefied natural gas (LNG).

He agreed with Patrick Wood, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, that up to 8 to 10 of the more than 40 LNG terminals now being contemplated will be built, noting that there is “an immense amount of natural gas in the world for the United States.”

Cartwright said Calpine has a current natural gas appetite equal to 3% of all the gas burned in North America. He said subsidiary Calpine Fuel Co. continues to be active in the exploration and production arena, and the firm is California’s second largest gas producer. The company is now also active in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rockies, the San Juan Basin and Canada.

Calpine also has “made a point of becoming the largest cogeneration company in the United States,” he said, “and most of our largest cogen facilities are along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf of Mexico coast.”

While it currently has three major plants under construction in California and another four that have been approved but will not be built until the wholesale market turns around, Calpine reiterated that the state needs more new power plants.

Cartwright stressed that the firm will only build new California power plants when it has long-term contracts for the plant’s output. In response to a shareholder’s question about state projections of some supply shortfall as early as late this summer or by the summer of 2006, he said California so far has not built all of the new generation plants it needs to, but he is “optimistic” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s programs will resume a more robust power plant-building program.

In the meantime, he was openly critical of the Bush administration for what he called “weakening environment controls” that allow old, outdated generation plants to continue to stay in operation. This removal of the environmental incentives for building new combined-cycle gas-fired power plants, which Calpine specializes in, is one of four major challenges that Cartwright listed for the company. The others are:

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