2002

The grilling of Arthur Andersen employees at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Thursday provided more drama than new facts. It was a lot like the courtroom scene in the movie A Few Good Men. Instead of Tom Cruise asking Jack Nicholson “Did you order a Code Red?” however, subcommittee Chairman Jim Greenwood (R-PA) asked David Duncan, the former Arthur Andersen partner in charge of Enron auditing, “Did you give an order to destroy [Enron] documents?”

A resolution calling on British Petroleum (BP) to assess the risks of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on the producer’s stock will be voted on by shareholders at its annual meeting in April. Similar resolutions have been filed to be placed on the ballots at ChevronTexaco’s and ExxonMobil’s annual meetings, while preliminary discussions are underway with Phillips Petroleum.

With Capitol Hill feeding reporters a steady diet of Enron Corp. stories last week, it fast became the issue du jour. Who’s kidding who, it was the only story in a town that thrives on scandals — real or imagined. In fact, there was such a rapid fire of “new” disclosures about the energy trader’s financial sleight of hand, outside auditor Arthur Andersen’s extracurricular activities, and the Bush administration’s ties and Capitol Hill lawmakers’ links to the bankrupt corporation, that somewhere along the way last week it became one big blur.

Sparked by much higher natural gas and oil prices during 2000, major U.S. energy companies posted net income of $53.2 billion for the year 2000, representing a 133% increase over 1999’s results, according to EIA’s Performance Profiles of Major Energy Producers 2000. The recent report showed that profits in 2000 notched a record high in EIA’s 27 years of surveying the industry through its Financial Reporting System (FRS).

In a major win for clean air activists in general and the natural gas industry in particular, the Department of Justice (DOJ) last Tuesday removed the roadblock it had placed in the path of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) enforcement of “new source review” (NSR) actions against a large number of dirty coal and oil-burning power plants and oil refineries. DOJ said the EPA enforcement actions are consistent with the Clean Air Act, and ongoing prosecutions should proceed.

Energy companies will have to cough up a total of $68 billion for new pipeline and storage facilities in North America over the next 14 years if they hope to cash in on the still-expected 30 Tcf U.S. market for natural gas by then, according to a new study commissioned by the INGAA Foundation. But higher capital costs in the wake of the Enron Corp. financial fiasco could delay some of the building.

Sparked by much higher natural gas and oil prices during 2000, major U.S. energy companies posted net income of $53.2 billion for the year 2000, representing a 133% increase over 1999’s results, according to EIA’s Performance Profiles of Major Energy Producers 2000. The recent report showed that profits in 2000 notched a record high in EIA’s 27 years of surveying the industry through its Financial Reporting System (FRS).

The Desert Crossing Gas Storage and Transportation System announced an open season beginning Thursday and extending through Feb. 8 for its 10 Bcf, high-deliverability natural gas storage complex and pipeline running through parts of Arizona and Nevada just east of Topock, AZ. The 800 MMcf/d pipeline will span roughly 300 miles from outside of Las Vegas to southwestern Arizona, connecting the storage complex with Kern River, Transwestern, and El Paso Natural Gas.

The Bush administration is considering plans that would ease environmental restrictions on upgraded existing coal-fired power plants and potentially force the delay or cancellation of a significant amount of new gas-fired power generation. Some industry observers estimate the potential impact at about 40,000 MW of generation capacity or roughly about 8 Bcf/d of gas demand.