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Local gas distribution companies (LDC) appear to have “lined up or have on hand” most of the natural gas supplies needed for the coming heating season, despite disruptions from Hurricane Katrina, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report issued Monday. Hurricane Rita is expected to only have a negligible impact on the physical gas supply to the LDCs.

Rumors that the winter heating season was over appear to be unfounded as the East has once again dipped below freezing, sparking natural gas futures to search for higher ground. April natural gas impressively climbed 26.1 cents in trading on Friday to close at $6.715, half of a cent off its high for the session. March expired on Thursday at $6.304.

While they appear at first glance to be strange bedfellows, even in California’s unpredictable regulatory milieu, the newest regulator on the five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Dian Grueneich, told an industry group earlier this month that she is a strong advocate for both addressing global climate change and exploring clean coal power generation options. Coming from a Democrat who was appointed late last year by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that should not be too surprising.

While they appear at first glance to be strange bedfellows, even in California’s unpredictable regulatory milieu, the newest regulator on the five-member California Public Utilities Commission, Dian Grueneich, told an industry group Friday she is a strong advocate for both addressing global climate change and exploring clean coal power generation options. Coming from a Democrat who was appointed late last year by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that should not be too surprising.

While the odds of the U.S. getting hit by another blackout on the scale of the one last year on Aug. 14 appear to be “a little less likely” as the country approaches the one-year anniversary of that historic event, David Brown, a vice-president at NUS Consulting, believes that there hasn’t been adequate follow through on a final report examining the outage completed by a joint U.S.-Canada task force earlier this year.

While some areas of the country appear to be out of the woods as far as heat is concerned, a majority of the East Coast still appears to be in for some warmer than normal temperatures from August through October, according to WSI Corp.

On the heels of winning an epic two-year battle for Canadian environmental approval this summer, the international Georgia Strait Crossing (GSX) sea-floor pipeline project offshore Washington State and British Columbia appears to have foundered on the rocks of higher natural gas prices.

On the heels of winning an epic two-year battle for Canadian environmental approval this summer, the international Georgia Strait Crossing (GSX) sea-floor pipeline project offshore of Washington State and British Columbia appears to have foundered on the rocks of higher natural gas prices.

In what appear to be test cases, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has singled out two published natural gas price indexes that were cited by interstate gas pipelines in new tariff filings to be monitored to determine whether they are in compliance with the agency’s new mandated standards for price reporting and reflect sufficient liquidity at referenced pipeline locations.