Broad

In a very broad initial decision issued late Tuesday, a FERC administrative law judge (ALJ) shot down nearly all of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line’s arguments in support of rolled-in rates for several Southeast expansions of the pipeline’s system that were built in the late 1990s. Instead, he recommended incremental pricing of the projects, which requires only those customers who directly benefit from expansions to pay the costs.

Pipeline safety legislation, separated out from the wreckage of the broad energy bill, made it through the Senate Wednesday night as stand-alone legislation (H.R. 3609). Proponents of the legislation were expecting the House also would vote it out before winding up its session Thursday night.

As part of its broad asset divestiture program to strengthen its balance sheet, El Paso Corp. agreed to sell 600 Bcfe of natural gas reserves in the Uintah Basin, with current output of about 80 MMcf/d, and a Utah natural gas gathering system to Denver-based independent producer, Westport Resources Corp., for $502 million. The transaction is expected to close next month.

Forcing Sempra Energy Resources (SER) and other suppliers to renegotiate the long-term electricity contracts that were brokered with California during the state’s energy crisis could jeopardize the very survival of some companies, threaten the development of a strong energy market in the state and result in higher power prices for consumers, energy suppliers told FERC.

House negotiators conferring on broad energy legislation (H.R. 4) offered last week to more than double the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in exchange for their Senate counterparts agreeing to allow oil and natural gas drilling on a 2,000-acre “footprint” in the Alaska wilderness region.

House negotiators conferring on broad energy legislation (H.R. 4) offered Wednesday to expand the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by 10 million acres in exchange for their Senate counterparts agreeing to allow oil and natural gas drilling on a 2,000-acre “footprint” in the Alaska wilderness region.

Riding a broad stock market rally fueled by investors looking for bargain-basement deals, Williams Cos. Inc.’s stock shot up nearly 88% to close at around $1.99 a share Monday, in spite of the company’s report earlier in the day of a major net loss for the second quarter due mostly to its floundering energy marketing and trading business, which lost nearly half a billion dollars for the period. The sharp bounce in the company’s stock, which had opened at $1.06 a share, suppressed speculation about possible bankruptcy.

While there have been a “dismaying number of reports of improprieties at energy companies” over the past months, natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs) have been “neither the focus nor the cause of [the] attention-grabbing headlines,” the American Gas Association (AGA) told FERC last Wednesday.

The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is undertaking a “comprehensive” review of the reporting requirements for natural gas pipelines, the electricity industry and oil pipelines to determine which still are needed and which aren’t.