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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she will call state lawmakers into special session on Oct. 18 to reconsider the state’s petroleum profits tax (PPT), which, according to a recent report, is yielding $800 million less than was expected.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday she will call state lawmakers into special session on Oct. 18 to reconsider the state’s petroleum profits tax (PPT), which she said is not working out as planned and needs revision.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) last week expressed supported for the recent call by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for only U.S. crews to be used on tankers transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the state’s ports.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said Monday he supported the recent call by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for only U.S. crews to be used on tankers transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the state’s ports.

A call by Canada’s Minister of Finance to begin taxing the distributable cash of income trusts in four years was supported last week by Bank of Canada Gov. David Dodge, who said the federal government should have acted “years ago” to end the tax loophole.

In passing up an authorized 6% rate hike for some of its customers to begin the new year, Southern California Edison Co. said its latest forecasts call for lower and stabilized wholesale natural gas costs, and that is the main driver in its assessment that its retail power rates will remain unchanged in 2007. Edison’s revenue/tariffs vice president, Akbar Jazayeri, outlined the utility’s assessment for Daily GPI in a brief interview Wednesday.

Arcadia Gas Storage (AGS) is holding a nonbinding open season through Jan. 18 for salt cavern natural gas storage service in North Louisiana. AGS is offering a total of 15.5 Bcf of working gas storage capacity to be developed in three phases at its existing facility near Arcadia, LA.

In what could be a final curtain call for the investigations and lawsuits that have littered the last five years in the wake of California’s 2000-2001 energy crisis, two state regulatory administrative law judges (ALJ) earlier in the month released a proposed decision recommending that regulators drop two investigations of Sempra Energy and its major utilities regarding alleged California border wholesale natural gas price manipulations. To date, Sempra has settled almost all of the allegations in court and regulatory agreements.

While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) continues to call for a warmer-than-normal winter, Andover, MA-based WSI Corp. said last week that it expects December-February to average cooler-than-normal temperatures in the major cities along the East Coast, with warmer-than-normal readings expected across the western two-thirds of the U.S. The WSI seasonal outlooks reference a standard 30-year norm (1971-2000).