Abandoned

Williams Cos. announced Thursday that it has abandoned plans to sell its wholesale power business, citing the dim prospects for selling the asset in a depressed power market.

Failing to find two additional votes, Republican-led proponents abandoned all hope late Monday of passing omnibus energy legislation in the Senate before adjourning, effectively stranding the bill in Congress until next year. GOP leaders vowed to pick up where they left off when they return in late January.

Despite the near total collapse of the merchant energy sector, some natural gas insiders are cautiously optimistic that the market ultimately will deal effectively with the current challenges it faces and new players eventually will fill the gap left by the former merchant energy “titans,” according to a recent study conducted by R. J. Rudden Associates Inc.

Rockies points abandoned their contrarian softness tendency from the day before and joined the overall market in across-the-board price gains Tuesday in response to wintry weather engulfing most of the U.S. and Canada. Once again the icy Northeast led the upward charge with varied gains ranging from about a quarter (Texas Eastern M-3) to more than a dollar (Tennessee Zone 6). Otherwise, increases ran from a nickel to a little more than a quarter.

Joining the growing pile of abandoned plans for new power plants in California, the City of Roseville, about 30 miles east of Sacramento, last week terminated its agreement with part of Enron Corp. to develop a 750-900 MW power plant in Placer County. The action has officials in the counties in and around the state capital worried about new sources of power for the future.

Chevron Canada Resources, a Canadian subsidiary of ChevronTexaco Corp., announced Tuesday that it has abandoned the Chevron et al Newburn H-23 exploratory well off the coast of Nova Scotia, but “we’re not packing our bags and leaving.”

Joining a growing list of peers that already have abandoned the legally ensnared Arthur Andersen LLP, Dynegy Corp., Apache Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Tom Brown Inc. said last week that they were cutting ties with the auditing firm. The announcements by the companies came within days of Arthur Andersen pleading not guilty to obstruction of justice in a Houston court.

TransCanada PipeLines’ fast action last week in replacing the abandoned Millennium Pipeline proposal — for the time being, at least — with a less environmentally-challenged new export route to the northeastern United States, is just the latest action in the pipeline company’s campaign to drum up increased traffic or raise its rates to cover what it calls the costs of competition.

A Shell Oil Co. affiliate, Shell Energy Services LLC, is exiting the Ohio retail electricity market and the Texas Electric Choice program in part because of the slowdown in deregulation and the volatility in energy prices over the past year.