Approves

The Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB) executive committee (EC)approved standards for World Wide Web-based electronic commerce andtitle transfer tracking last week. The EC approved the first partof a series of standards designed to provide a 13-month transitionfor interstate gas pipelines from electronic bulletin boards tointeractive Web sites.

The Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB) executive committee (EC)approved standards for World Wide Web-based electronic commerce andtitle transfer tracking last week. The EC approved the first partof a series of standards designed to provide a 13-month transitionfor interstate gas pipelines from electronic bulletin boards tointeractive Web sites.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a change inthe Kansas City Board of Trade’s last trading day for its westernnatural gas futures contract that will place KCBT contractexpiration on the same day as Henry Hub futures go off the board atthe New York Mercantile Exchange. The last trading day will now bethe third business day prior to the first day of the deliverymonth. Formerly, it was the second business day prior to the firstday of the delivery month.

California’s Gov. Pete Wilson has signed into law a measure thatfor the first time allows full judicial review of California PublicUtilities Commission decisions. This could mean more courtchallenges to future energy decisions when the law goes into effectJan. 1, 1999.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has conditionallyapproved a new interruptible park and loan service (PLS) to starttoday on Williams Gas Pipelines Central. The service – allowingcustomers to park or request a loan of gas at each of Williams’pools – was designed to give those customers greater flexibility ina market that has evolved from a monthly to a daily business. FERCapproved the service subject to refund and certain conditions.

FERC’s approval of El Paso’s $3.6 million Bondad Line expansion,which would increase capacity by 117 MMcf/d in October, likely willprovide some relief to Bondad shippers, who have struggled throughmany days of constraints and allocations on the San Juan Basinsystem.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has approved anexpansion of Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania’s customer choice pilotprogram to include 270,000 residential and small-commercialcustomers in south-central and western Pennsylvania, or about 70%of the company’s customers.

The battle over the next gas distribution frontier is continuingin Maine with the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) grantingBangor Gas Co. unconditional authority to provide gas distributionservice to five municipalities in the greater Bangor area. BangorGas, a joint venture of Bangor Hydro and Energy Pacific, iscompeting for market share in the area with CMP Natural Gas, ajoint venture of Central Maine Power and New York State Electric& Gas. Both projects are intended to provide new gas serviceonce Maritimes and Northeast comes on line in November 1999.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) quickly approved aproposal by MichCon to implement a three-year plan to offer its 1.2million residential and commercial gas customers the opportunity toselect alternative natural gas suppliers. The plan also cuts andfreezes gas costs for customers who stay with MichCon as their gasprovider.