Beginning

Range Resources and FirstEnergy announced last week the officialbeginning to their $200 million Appalachian joint venture, GreatLakes Energy Partners. The equal partnership combines all of bothcompanies’ oil and gas assets in the region.

While it won’t get there for a while, gas is on its way toWarren County, NC. Frontier Energy, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy,this week is beginning construction of its planned Warren Countydistribution system and touted gas’ role in the area’s economicrevitalization. The Warren County pipeline is part of a $55 milliondistribution system being built by Frontier to serve residents andbusinesses in seven northwestern North Carolina counties.

Although “storm hype” was a popular phrase in market discussionsThursday, the hype factor was beginning to fade in the afternoon asTropical Storm Bret achieved named status, prompting the Mexicangovernment to post coastal storm warnings from Tampico southward.Some strengthening of Bret is likely over the next 24 hours, theNational Hurricane Center said in a 4 p.m. CDT advisory.

Transwestern will shutdown Station 1 (Kingman) for automationbeginning Sept. 1. The station should be back up Nov. 31. CurrentWest of Thoreau capacity is 950,000 MMBtu/d. This will be cut toabout 875,000 MMBtu/d during the outage.

Northern States Power Co. issued a request for proposals (RFP)for up to 1,200 MW of power generation capacity and associatedenergy for a period of 10 years, beginning sometime between May 1,2003, and May 1, 2005. NSP will use the additional resources tomeet increased retail customer demand. NSP is seeking peaking,intermediate and base-load resources. The RFP is open to allsources of power, including renewable resources. NSP will selectwinning proposals based on cost, environmental impact and deliveryguarantees. Before awarding the contract(s), NSP will submit theevaluation of the proposals to the Minnesota Public UtilitiesCommission (MPUC) for review. For a copy of the RFP or moreinformation, contact David L. Zuck at (612) 330-6452. He also maybe reached via fax, (612) 330-5868, or e-mail,david.l.zuck@nspco.com.

After beginning last week in the middle of a three-dayhigh-inventory OFO (see Daily GPI, June 22), Pacific Gas &Electric declared another one for Saturday after previously sayingit expected system linepack to remain well above the utility’starget through the weekend. The new order carried a positiveimbalance tolerance of 11% and penalties of $1/dth fornon-compliance.

MichCon officials announced a successful beginning to its pilotprogram yesterday, with 70,000 of their 75,000 eligible customerschoosing a newly introduced competing supplier in the first year ofa three-year program. Stephen E. Ewing, the president of theMichigan gas utility, said the results prove customer choiceprograms can work for the entire state.

The April aftermarket was off to a very strong beginning inswing deals done Wednesday. Virtually every point was trading abovebidweek levels and in some cases much higher. For example, a buyerwho paid in the mid $1.70s for April baseload at the SouthernCalifornia border reported a $1.90-95 swing range. Most sourcesagreed that the incremental price strength derived almost entirelyfrom “following the screen” upward.

Producers who may have been tempted to sing a few (paraphrased)bars of “It’s beginning to look a lot like winter” upon seeingTuesday’s weather reports probably stifled the urge after cashprices at most points fell by widely varying amounts. The softnessoccurred despite cold to very cold temperatures pervading almostevery part of Canada and the U.S.