Anticipated

In a long-anticipated announcement Tuesday, USX Corp. said it plans to break up its energy and steel businesses to give the companies more flexibility to expand and pursue acquisitions. The planned spin-off would completely separate USX’s two divisions, Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Group and Houston-based Marathon Group, and comes following a five-month review of the corporation’s capital structure (see Daily GPI, Dec. 1, 2000).

Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) was expected to send out a “discussion draft” of his widely anticipated emergency legislation for California to members of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee late yesterday, which means that it’s “still very open to change,” said Barton press aide Samantha Jordan. While “it’s more likely than not” that Barton will introduce a bill to aid California, “it’s not definite.” If he decides in favor of legislation, she said he will probably come out with it in late April after the congressional recess. Barton would then hold one hearing on the bill and move quickly to mark-up. Barton also is hoping to unveil omnibus energy legislation in the House by late May or early June, Jordan noted, and forward it to the White House by early fall.

To strengthen its capital structure before an anticipated spinoff this year, Tulsa-based Williams Communications exchanged assetsfor shares of stock with its parent company Williams yesterday. Inthe agreement, Williams received 24.3 million common shares ofWilliams Communications, bringing its total ownership to 420million shares, or 86% of the outstanding stock. In return forequity, Williams Communications will purchase its outstandingpromissory note from Williams and acquire the 15-story,750,000-square-foot Williams Technology Center, scheduled forcompletion this summer adjacent to Williams’ headquarters in Tulsa.

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) announced Friday he is putting offintroducing the Senate Republicans’ widely anticipatedcomprehensive energy legislation until the week of Feb. 26, at theearliest.

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) announced Friday he is putting offintroducing the Senate Republicans’ widely anticipatedcomprehensive energy legislation until the week of Feb. 26, at theearliest.

At 2 p.m. (PST) Monday, the Cal-ISO anticipated California wouldavoid rolling blackouts and have only some business interruptionsin northern California to get around the transmission bottleneckfor moving supplies south to north. The prognosis for Tuesday ispretty much as it was yesterday, said Cal-ISO’s COO KellanFluckiger, noting that they do not anticipate any unplannedoutages, which is always the wildcard in transmission gridmanagement in the midst of shortages of the magnitude thatCalifornia has faced for the past two months.

The market astonished many traders with its show of weekendstrength Friday. They had anticipated that a week of falling priceswas about to reverse, but few if any were looking for much morethan flat numbers at most points. Instead, only small declines atStanfield and Kingsgate differed from increases ranging from about20 cents in the Rockies to triple digits in California.

As anticipated after Wednesday’s dollar-plus screen plunge, cashprices also were falling bigtime Thursday. Exceptions to declinesof 50 cents or more were rare. However, some sources detected signsthat the huge erosion of cash numbers that started late last weekmight be near an end.

Based on current withdrawal rates, working gas inventory andanticipated load forecast, Questar said Thursday it expects to go intocompressed withdrawal mode at the Clay Basin storage facility withinthe next three to seven days. This prompted concern by Northwest thatsuch an action will cause it “to begin to accumulate unmanageablelevels of condensate liquids at its Green River [WY] compressorstation similar to last year, when Questar had to reduce its confirmedquantities to Northwest” (see Daily GPI,Feb. 14, 2000; Feb. 23, 2000). Bothpipes said they are working together to manage liquids at GreenRiver. Questar noted that to mitigate future impact, it plans to builda dewpoint plant at Clay Basin. Permitting is under way andcompletion is expected in late summer, Questar said. A pipelinerepresentative said “compressed withdrawal” is the difference betweenfree flow, which is the normal operational mode for Clay Basin untilabout mid-January each year, and using compressors to suck gas out ofthe ground. Currently Clay Basin is about 32% full for thenon-Questar-contracted 54 million dekatherms held by seven or eightmajor customers including Northwest, he said. Using compression inwithdrawals heats the gas so it takes longer to cool down and for theliquids to condense out of it; thus the liquids tend to form afterit’s gotten out into the pipeline, he said.