Actions

In separate actions Tuesday the California Energy Commission (CEC) agreed to start its 12-month permitting process for a major carbon capture and generation project in the oilfields in the state’s central valley and a simple-cycle natural gas-fired peaking plant in San Francisco’s East Bay area.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Thursday took a couple of actions dealing with natural gas utility rates that are footnotes to more turbulent times in the state’s evolving gas markets. On the one hand, the CPUC established a proceeding to allocate settlement monies from past lawsuits stemming from the 1999-2002 energy crisis, but it rejected a request to suspend a long-standing market-indexed capital cost adjustment mechanism.

Dissenting voices both within and outside the state regulatory process got considerably louder last Thursday regarding actions by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) with several billion dollars of impact — a rate case for Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) and an upgrade of the transition to advanced metering for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E). Ironically, at this same meeting the CPUC approved nearly $400,000 in compensation to consumer groups and individuals for contributions they have made in past regulatory cases.

Federal and state authorities joined last Tuesday to bring civil and criminal actions against a former trader for the Bank of Montreal (BMO), his supervisor and three executives at a brokerage firm for the bank for deceiving and defrauding the bank about the true value of its natural gas options book.

The Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and Bureau of Land Management actions fall short of what is required to to ensure the proper measurement of oil and natural gas production for royalty purposes, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a recent report.

The Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and Bureau of Land Management actions fall short of what is required to to ensure the proper measurement of oil and natural gas production for royalty purposes, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Friday.

Texas should repeal portions of its Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA) that favor gas-fired plants and take other actions to promote a more diverse generation mix, and the state should resist efforts to reregulate the retail energy market, according to the Governor’s Competitiveness Council (GCC).

Texas should repeal portions of its Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA) that favor gas-fired plants and take other actions to promote a more diverse generation mix, and the state should resist efforts to reregulate the retail energy market, according to the Governor’s Competitiveness Council (GCC).

Building on FERC’s recent actions to improve competition in the secondary market for pipeline capacity, the executive committee of the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) Wholesale Gas Quadrant voted out a protocol Wednesday for using the differentials between natural gas commodity price index points to price short-term released capacity.