Appears

In a complete about-face, Southern Company now appears to be astrong champion of an amended deliverability expansion of Petal GasStorage LLC and has asked FERC to process the application as”quickly as practicable.”

Judging from a recent survey, the secondary capacity marketappears to be working efficiently and not putting a crimp on gasindustry competition. While deal activity is leveling off, themarket is still dynamic enough to accommodate new entrants,according to energy industry consulting firm Skipping Stone Inc.

While deal activity in the capacity release markets appears tobe leveling off, the market is still dynamic enough to accommodatenew market entrants, according to energy industry consulting firmSkipping Stone Inc.

A discussion draft of Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) much-anticipatedretail electric legislation that was unveiled last week appears tobe most notable for the two things that were missing from it – arenewable-fuel mandate and a date-certain.

There appears to have been a minor shake-up at the Natural GasSupply Association (NGSA) last week. It came during Skip Horvath’sfirst week as president of the producer group that’s still reelingfrom the effects of an embezzlement scandal uncovered earlier inthe year.

The draft version of Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) much-anticipatedretail electric legislation that was unveiled last week appears tobe most notable for the two things that were missing from it – arenewable-fuel mandate and a date-certain.

There appears to have been a minor shake-up at the Natural GasSupply Association (NGSA) this week. It comes during Skip Horvath’sfirst week as president of the producer group that’s stillrecovering from an embezzlement scandal uncovered earlier in theyear.

The lengthy and at times acrimonious fight between Oneok and theOklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) over upstream unbundlingappears to be over. On Thursday, the OCC voted 2 to 0, with onecommissioner absent, to unbundle the upstream gas gathering andstorage services of Oklahoma Natural Gas (ONG) and Kansas GasService, divisions of Oneok Inc.

The merger of New Century Energies and Northern States Powerappears to be moving faster than expected. The companies announcedplans yesterday to hold their special shareholder meetings toapprove the merger in late June rather than in September. Theproposed merger requires shareholder approval as well as approvalor regulatory review by various federal and state agencies. Whencompleted the merged company will serve 3 million electricitycustomers and 1.5 million natural gas customers in 12 U.S. states.