Bizarre

What has been bizarre behavior for more than a month turned intooutright insanity Thursday as California’s electricity gridoperator declared a Stage Three power alert and narrowly avertedrolling blackouts for firm customers. State officials had expectedto have to curtail up to 2,000 MW between 5-8 p.m., centered mostlyin northern California. An unprecedented one-third (15,000 MW) ofthe capacity usually available was out of service.

In what is becoming a bizarre case of concern to future merchantenergy project proponents, California regulators rescued a secondmerchant underground natural gas storage project from the trashheap Thursday by refusing to support a recommendation to deny theproposal and postponing the item for a future meeting. Analternative to the proposed administrative law judge (ALJ) decisionis likely to be developed by one of the members of the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission.

In what is becoming a bizarre case of concern to future merchantenergy project proponents, California regulators rescued a secondmerchant underground natural gas storage project from the trashheap last week by refusing to support a recommendation to deny theproposal and postponing the item for a future meeting. Analternative to the proposed administrative law judge (ALJ) decisionis likely to be developed by one of the members of the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission.

Expiration days are known for their unusualness, but perhaps noother day in the history of the New York Mercantile Exchange willmatch the one turned in yesterday. The last few days of trading hadbeen relatively tame, but a telephone glitch that knocked outcommunications on the floor of the Exchange (see “Phone Lines Dead; Nymex TradingDisrupted”) at approximately 1:50 EST forced many traders intotrading at prices and volumes “that they otherwise would not havedone,” a source told GPI. As a result of the madness, the Marchcontract finally left the board at $2.286, up an even 7.0 cents forthe day.