2003

In the wake of California’s major regulatory move to get Pacific Gas and Electric Co. out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the legal fallout from the western energy crisis of three years ago will not stop. Lawsuits will go on. The attorneys will continue to keep the meters running even though the utility and regulators have called a truce.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Wednesday issued a joint safe harbor statement to “make absolutely clear” that neither “has or will bring false-reporting cases against energy market participants where the false report is inadvertent or based solely on human error.

Natural gas and electric companies that report prices to index developers are required to include information on trades at all points regardless of whether they are liquid or illiquid, said FERC Friday in an order clarifying its July policy statement on energy price indexes (see Daily GPI, July 24).

Responding to an inter-office email in October 2000, J. Robert (Bo) Collins the current head of the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), then employed by El Paso Corp., advised El Paso traders to report only verifiable price information to index developers rather than El Paso’s own “book bias,” according to documents filed in a Houston court case.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is taking another look at the potential safety and security risks of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker transportation in an attempt to reconcile three post-Sept. 11, 2001 reports that reached conflicting conclusions. At the same time, the proposed siting of an ExxonMobil Corp. LNG terminal just south of the city limits of Mobile, AL, has stirred controversy over safety/security hazards there.

Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline LLC notified FERC Wednesday that it plans to withdraw its application to add 385 MDth/d of capacity to its system in New England in light of the fact that Canadian regulatory review of an upstream supply project — EnCana Energy Services Inc.’s Deep Panuke natural gas development project offshore Nova Scotia — has been discontinued indefinitely.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is taking another look at the potential safety and security risks of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker transportation in an attempt to reconcile three reports that reached conflicting conclusions. At the same time, the proposed siting of an ExxonMobil Corp. LNG terminal just south of the city limits of Mobile, AL, has stirred controversy over safety/security hazards there.

The broad energy bill’s proposals putting FERC in the business of collecting prices on natural gas and electricity trades are a bad idea because they would interfere with energy markets and the price discovery process, and would keep FERC from carrying out its more important market-monitoring duties, said Commissioner Sharon Brown-Hruska of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Thursday.

One of bankrupt Enron Corp.’s federal examiners criticized Bank of America Corp., Royal Bank of Canada, KPMG LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in yet another report on the corrupt company.