April

With wholesale gas prices for March and April nearly triple what prices were for the same months in 2002, there is very little that can be done to prevent some impact on utility customers. Despite forward purchasing, storage and other risk management practices, Mobile Gas in Alabama said its residential customers still will see a 22% increase in their rates.

For the winter billing period of November through April, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Thursday its 3.8 million residential customers will receive baseline volume increases of 5% to 26% for the lowest natural gas rates that it charges.

PG&E Gas Transmission-Northwest said scheduled Station 3 maintenance (see Daily GPI, April 23) is causing a greater restriction than anticipated. Starting with Thursday’s Intra-day 1 cycle and effective until further notice, Kingsgate capacity was further limited to 2,220 MMcf/d.

After warning of its possibility Tuesday (see Daily GPI, April 4), Sonat said Wednesday it is implementing a Type 5 OFO, effective with Friday’s gas day, due to excess production upstream of its facilities in Logansport, LA. “The quantities currently flowing into the Logansport facilities have decreased very little and the operational problems [with dehydration equipment] have not been alleviated,” Sonat said in its bulletin board posting. Affecting 25 points in the Logansport Field and another 24 in the Joaquin Field, the OFO calls for receipts exceeding 104% of scheduled quantities to be penalized $15/Dth.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (NIPSCO) named BarrettHatches president and CEO. Hatches, who will join NIPSCO April 2,will oversee all natural gas and electric distribution operationsof the utility serving more than 700,000 natural gas customers and430,000 electric customers across the northern third of Indiana.Hatches also will serve as CEO of NiSource’s other Indiana naturalgas distribution companies, Northern Indiana Fuel and Light, andKokomo Gas and Fuel. Hatches, 45, currently is president and CEO ofAlaska-based ENSTAR Natural Gas, a gas distribution subsidiary ofSEMCO ENERGY.

PG&E Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) said it would filewith FERC in April to add 200 MDth/d of firm transportationcapacity to its mainline. A recent open season attracted 25 bids,totaling 2,138 MDth/d of capacity, but GTN said 200 MDth/d was themaximum it could do under the circumstances and under its existing26-cent maximum rate for FT.

No one can really predict the weather, “but at the rate winteris setting in, by the middle of February we’ll be where we usuallyare in April” in regard to natural gas in storage, according toThomas A. Petrie, chairman of Petrie Parkman & Co. in Denver.

Public Service Co. of Colorado will limit production behindBaxter Point to 3 MMcf/d April 24-May 7. Affected producers arebeing notified.

California, the trend-setter in electric restructuring, isexpected to take it to the next level with a “decision-making”investigation starting this fall on distributed generation and themonster issue lurking behind it — the sacrosanct localdistribution franchises.