April

Wild Goose Storage, California’s first merchant natural gasstorage facility, is set to begin operations April 1, at the sametime the state’s second merchant storage project gets a publicairing of its 18 Bcf proposal.

Florida Gas Transmission plans a smart pig run April 5-9 betweenStations 2 (Robstown, TX) and 3 (Port Lavaca, TX). The project willlimit capacity at these interconnects upstream of Station 3:Duke-Robstown (40 MMcf/d), Valero Nueces (35 MMcf/d) and MOPS (75MMcf/d).

Four major gas associations last week urged FERC to reconsider”as soon as possible” an April rule requiring interstate pipelinesto conduct electronic communication using only electronic datainterchange (EDI) over the Internet by June 1, 1999.

As expected following the landmark gas accord in Canada in thefirst week of April, it has been smooth sailing for the merger ofTransCanada and Nova Corp. The Alberta Energy and Utilities Boardgave its blessing to the deal this week. And the companies said theCanadian Competition Bureau has completed its review of thetransaction without requesting alterations.

The following is a clarification of a story titled “NGC’sCapacity Posting,” which ran in Daily GPI, April 22: Thecalculations and conclusions described in the story were totallythose of Michael J. Harris of the Reed Consulting Group ascontained in a FERC filing made by the producers protesting the NGCcapacity contracts on El Paso. The Prebon Energy brokerage housemade no predictions. A footnote to the filing says Prebon, whichhas offices in Jersey City, NJ, and Houston, supplied futurequotes at a specific time – 11:30 a.m. on March 30 – of the SanJuan Basin-California border basis differential. The quoted remarksregarding the expected San Juan-SoCal basis differential for thefuture and the attractiveness of the NGC capacity to other shipperswere those of Harris and the Reed Consulting group. Further Prebonsays it did not give basis information to Mr. Harris or the ReedConsulting Group but that the basis information attributed toPrebon was supplied by one of the parties to the filing. NGIregrets the error.

FERC has scheduled a public conference for April 15-16 toexamine the future of ISOs in administering the electrictransmission grid on a regional basis. The Commission isconsidering whether policy changes are necessary “in order topromote competition and reliability in bulk power markets.”

Consumers Energy will expand its “Gas Customer Choice” retailprogram this April to 100,000 customers state-wide in Michigan,following a one-year pilot that allowed 500 customers in Bay Countyto pick another natural gas supplier. In all, 300,000 customerswill be given a choice of suppliers over the next three years.