Burn

The Southwest Gas LDC issued a Hold Burn to Scheduled Quantities notice effective Wednesday until further notice due to low linepack on Kern River and drafting of Southwest’s system.

The spotlight on commodity index funds and their impact on markets continues to burn brightly following a scathing report from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), acting ranking minority member. The report claims that commodity index traders, in the aggregate, have made such large purchases on the Chicago wheat futures market that they “have pushed up futures prices, disrupted the normal relationship between futures prices and cash prices for wheat, and caused farmers, grain elevators, grain processors, consumers and others to experience significant unwarranted costs and price risks.”

The spotlight on commodity index funds and their impact on markets continues to burn brightly following a scathing report from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), acting ranking minority member. The report claims that commodity index traders, in the aggregate, have made such large purchases on the Chicago wheat futures market that they “have pushed up futures prices, disrupted the normal relationship between futures prices and cash prices for wheat, and caused farmers, grain elevators, grain processors, consumers and others to experience significant unwarranted costs and price risks.”

Southwest Gas declared a hold to burn notice, effective Tuesday until further notice, due to low linepack on its system and drafting on Kern River, according to a Kern River bulletin board posting. Southwest asked for customer cooperation “to limit actual takes to not exceed scheduled supplies, which will assist in avoiding drafting until such time as the supply shortages can be corrected. Also, negative daily nominations for imbalance paybacks from Southwest to customers have been eliminated…until further notice.”

Southwest Gas said it declared a “hold to burn notice” Wednesday due to scheduled system maintenance on Kern River.

Southern California Gas did not extend a high-linepack OFO beyond Tuesday.

While Massachusetts manufacturers have been converting their facilities to burn natural gas at the behest of public policy leaders, they are suffering from a gas supply shortage due to the failure of public policy to embrace new sources of gas, according to the Massachusetts Chemistry & Technology Alliance Inc.

While Massachusetts manufacturers have been converting their facilities to burn natural gas at the behest of public policy leaders, they are suffering from a gas supply shortage due to the failure of public policy to embrace new sources of gas, according to the Massachusetts Chemistry & Technology Alliance Inc.

Gas customers in metro Chicago and area suburbs both have been reducing the amount of gas they burn through conservation and energy efficiency measures, and the utilities are in the early stages in considering how they might make up for lost volumetric-based revenue.