Attacked

Shippers of Northern Natural Gas Co. have attacked the pipeline’s proposal to sell 419 miles of pipe facilities and compression assets in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to Duke Energy Field Services LP. (DEFS), and to reclassify the transmission facilities as non-jurisdictional gathering following the spin-off.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, attacked by a public interest group for paying too much attention to LNG project sponsors, came out swinging Thursday against the “nimbyism” behind the group’s report, saying “the article glosses over the economic imperative for LNG imports.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, attacked by a public interest group for paying too much attention to LNG project sponsors, came out swinging Thursday against the “nimbyism” behind the group’s report, saying “the article glosses over the economic imperative for LNG imports.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, attacked by a public interest group for paying too much attention to LNG project sponsors, came out swinging Thursday against the “nimbyism” behind the group’s report, saying “the article glosses over the economic imperative for LNG imports.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) attacked ex-Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay in federal court this week, claiming Lay had “demonstrated a frankly whimsical approach” toward constitutional protection against self-incrimination, and asked the court to put an end to “this charade” by compelling him to turn over 870 pages of documents it has requested for nearly two years.

A House lawmaker from Texas quickly withdrew a proposal Tuesday to put all natural gas pipelines in California under the jurisdiction of FERC after he came under a barrage of criticism from his colleagues.

Major energy providers and users alike last week attacked FERC staff’s efforts to establish a new pricing formula that would lower the purchase costs power generators could legitimately claim for natural gas used to produce electricity during the California energy crisis nearly two years ago — a move that, if successful, would raise the level of potential refunds owed by generators to state energy consumers. They urged the Commission to jettison staff’s proposed pricing alternative, arguing staff fell far short of proving that the conventional method used for computing generators’ gas costs — published price indices — had been successfully manipulated to the point where gas prices were inflated.

A new General Accounting Office (GA0) report concluding that theelectric utilities are lagging behind on Y2K readiness came underfire in industry circles for being based on data that was sixmonths old. The GAO report, which was released last Friday,followed a Senate study of the issue that industry critics contendalso was founded on out-dated, faulty information.