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Six years after it was the center of an economic and energy meltdown, California’s latest public-sector energy financings are gaining improved reviews by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) and Moody’s Investors Service.

Following up on his 2007 Atlantic hurricane season preview last week (see Daily GPI, March 28), AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center Chief Forecaster Joe Bastardi said Monday people should pay much more attention to the forecasted storm intensity than the much more publicized number of storms expected for a season. With that being the case, he warned that close attention should be paid to the 2007 season.

Energy efficiency, renewables and climate change will take center stage at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in this Congress. Also on the ticket will be energy research and development (R&D) funding and what to do about the oil and gas royalty losses that resulted from missing price caps in contracts with the Interior Department, said Bob Simon, staff director of the committee. Opening up more of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and gas drilling will be absent, he said.

Energy efficiency, renewables and climate change will take center stage at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in this Congress. Also on the ticket will be energy research and development (R&D) funding and what to do about the oil and gas royalty losses that resulted from missing price caps in contracts with the Interior Department, said Bob Simon, staff director of the committee. Opening up more of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and gas drilling will be absent, he said.

Scientists with the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday said ocean temperatures have “increased remarkably” in the equatorial Pacific in the last two weeks, and these El Niño conditions are likely to continue into early 2007.

The BP America oil pipeline problem in Alaska that caused the partial shutdown of the largest oil field in the U.S. will put pipeline safety front and center when Congress returns from its hiatus next week, but it’s not expected to have a spill-over effect on natural gas pipelines, said an official with a major interstate gas pipeline group.

Citing the U.S. natural gas futures market’s volatility over the past few years in spite of the market’s underlying fundamentals, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) called on regulators Tuesday to investigate volatility levels and possible manipulation of the market.

The National Hurricane Center said it was possible for Tropical Storm Alberto to become the season’s first hurricane before making landfall on the upper Gulf Coast side of the Florida Peninsula early Tuesday morning, but the storm had minimal impact on Gulf producers and the gas futures market Monday. The July contract inched up 5.2 cents to settle at $6.224.

With energy prices taking center stage once again, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and three other lawmakers have introduced legislation that seeks to provide the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with greater authority to oversee over-the-counter (OTC) energy trades on electronic trading platforms that currently are largely unregulated.