2000

After watching prices gyrate wildly for the last several months,traders were looking forward to a nice, quiet, last trading sessionof the year Friday at Nymex. After all, who would want to propelprices dramatically higher or lower in an abbreviated tradingsession just before the holidays? As a result, prices wouldprobably just chop lazily sideways, allowing traders the time tocatch up on paperwork, right?

New Year’s Eve 2000 will not be remembered as the “Night theLights Went Out in Cheyenne, WY.”

Reluctantly and in the face of extraordinary pressure fromfinancial, utility and public officials, California regulators lastThursday took initial steps to unfreeze retail electricity ratesfor the state’s two largest investor owned utilities (IOUs) tobegin to cut into the $8 billion of debt dragging down the IOUssince mid-year. An unprecedented lobbying and public communicationseffort by the utilities preceded the action.

Analysts from WEFA Energy and UBS Warburg yesterday joined manyother energy experts who have sent out warnings this week thatthere is an increasing possibility that the gas industry will facesupply shortages later this winter because of continuingcolder-than-normal weather and large storage withdrawals.

Although natural gas stocks are below the five-year average,Energy Information Administration (EIA) and industry officials tolda Senate committee last week that the nation was not facing asupply crisis of a magnitude that could leave some customerswithout gas this winter.

More gas processing plants are temporarily shutting their doorsthis month, a fallout from higher natural gas prices. The usuallymore expensive gas liquids now cost less than the raw natural gas,and buyers looking for propane, butane, isobutane and chemicalfeedstocks may have to look a little longer and spend a little morethan they did a month ago.

More gas processing plants are temporarily shutting their doorsthis month, a fallout from higher natural gas prices. The usuallymore expensive gas liquids now cost less than the raw natural gas,and buyers looking for propane, butane, isobutane and chemicalfeedstocks may have to look a little longer and spend a little morethan they did a month ago.

New Power Company CEO Eugene Lockhart said last week the consumer backlash to high energy prices this winter and potential push toward reregulation won’t deter his company from becoming the largest retail marketing firm in the nation by early next year. Lockhart said the future is bright for New Power as it enters its first winter in operation with 340,000 retail customers and its sights on obtaining a total of one million in 2001.

Two basis swap contracts based on NGI’s bidweek indexes atChicago and the Southern California border were among a number ofenergy products approved yesterday for listing on enymex, the NewYork Mercantile Exchange’s Internet-based trading system. Nymexexpects to launch the new system during the second quarter of 2001.