Cases

Major rate requests from Spokane, WA-based Avista Corp.’s natural gas/electric utility operations in the state and Idaho Power Co. are scheduled to kick off this month for the Idaho Public Utilities Commission in the mid part of the month. In the meantime, the state regulators last Thursday denied Avista’s request for a March 10 effective date for its proposed hikes of 24.1% for power and 9.2% for natural gas.

A day after major cash market losses that exceeded a dollar in some cases, traders stanched the hemorrhaging to some extent Wednesday with mixed price movement that mostly was a dime or less up or down from flat. Late quotes were rising, which a couple of sources attributed to short squeezes.

FERC put an end to one of the most tortuous cases in its history last Thursday, approving with one modification a $1.7 billion settlement of California’s allegations that an El Paso Corp. pipeline drove up natural gas prices in the state by withholding capacity during the state’s energy crisis, and that it gave preferential treatment to its power merchant affiliate during bidding on transportation capacity.

In a significant victory for federal prosecutors who are pursuing other high-profile fraud cases post-Enron, a Houston jury late Thursday convicted former Dynegy Inc. executive Jamie Olis, 37, on six counts of fraud.

FERC put an end to one of the most tortuous cases in its history Thursday, approving with one modification a $1.7 billion settlement of California’s allegations that an El Paso Corp. pipeline drove up natural gas prices in the state by withholding capacity during the state’s energy crisis, and that it gave preferential treatment to its power merchant affiliate during bidding on transportation capacity.

Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) and Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) both reported natural gas pipeline damage on Tuesday. In both cases, there were no injuries and no fires, but gas flows were impacted.

Prices were still on the rise in most cases Monday despite somewhat weaker weather fundamentals, but the gains generally were smaller than those for the weekend. A majority of increases were fairly mild in single digits, although several Northeast citygates and scattered other points rose by dime-plus amounts. A few points were flat.

In what appear to be test cases, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has singled out two published natural gas price indexes that were cited by interstate gas pipelines in new tariff filings to be monitored to determine whether they are in compliance with the agency’s new mandated standards for price reporting and reflect sufficient liquidity at referenced pipeline locations.

In what appear to be test cases, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued two orders to determine whether published natural gas price indexes that are cited by interstate natural gas pipelines in their tariffs are in compliance with the agency’s new mandated standards for price reporting and reflect sufficient liquidity at referenced pipeline locations.