Alike

Major energy providers and users alike last week attacked FERC staff’s efforts to establish a new pricing formula that would lower the purchase costs power generators could legitimately claim for natural gas used to produce electricity during the California energy crisis nearly two years ago — a move that, if successful, would raise the level of potential refunds owed by generators to state energy consumers. They urged the Commission to jettison staff’s proposed pricing alternative, arguing staff fell far short of proving that the conventional method used for computing generators’ gas costs — published price indices — had been successfully manipulated to the point where gas prices were inflated.

Producers and consumers alike stand to gain if Quebec and Ontario secure access to natural gas from the new production fields offshore of Nova Scotia that have to date been tapped almost entirely for exports to the northeastern United States, according to Gaz Metropolitain of Montreal and Enbridge Inc., owner of Toronto distributor Enbridge Consumers’ Gas. The two companies are proposing to build a new pipeline, the Cartier project, that would connect markets in Quebec City with a new lateral off of the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline in New Brunswick.

With proposed solutions already given to both state policymakers and utilities alike, the independent electric generators met Monday in an attempt to hammer out common strategies for repairing California’s tattered electricity restructuring efforts, including a wholesale spot power market that is continuing to produce historically high prices.

The one-day “Natural Gas Summit” held yesterday in Coloradoturned out to be quite an eye-open for industrial gas customers andsuppliers alike, according to participants.