Child

Youngstown, OH, long a Rust Belt poster child, now is watching the phoenix-like revival of its flagship steel plant, Youngstown Iron Sheet & Tube, thanks to the Utica and Marcellus shales. The 100-year old plant, once one of largest in the world before it foundered in the 1970s collapse of the nation’s steel industry, will be making steel pipe to serve the state’s burgeoning shale gas and oil development.

Youngstown, OH, long a Rust Belt poster child, now is watching the phoenix-like revival of its flagship steel plant, Youngstown Iron Sheet & Tube, thanks to the Utica and Marcellus shales. The 100-year old plant, once one of largest in the world before it foundered in the 1970s collapse of the nation’s steel industry, will be making steel pipe to serve the state’s burgeoning shale gas and oil development.

An apparent natural gas explosion about 10:45 p.m. EST Wednesday killed five people, including a four-month-old child, in Allentown, PA, police said. A fire following the explosion affected a total of 47 properties, including 10 businesses, and forced more than 750 people to evacuate over a three-block area.

Indicative of just how far the parent has gone in dispossessing a wayward child, the San Francisco-based energy utility holding company PG&E Corp. said in a financial filing last Wednesday that it will go to trial next year over a $361 million tax refund its bankrupt former merchant energy unit, PG&E National Energy Group (NEG), is claiming as its own.

California, as the nation’s early poster child for energyindustry restructuring, has to bite the bullet and decide if itwants robust retail competition for natural gas and electricity, orwhether it wants to stop where it is now with wholesalecompetition, “declare victory and everyone go home,” said thestate’s top energy regulator, Richard Bilas, an economist andpresident of the California Public Utilities Commission. If itwants retail competition, then the state should consider adoptingsome of the aspects of Georgia’s gas restructuring andPennsylvania’s electricity changes.

Like an irate mother ordering her child to come inside while theother children play, the Georgia Public Service Commissionunanimously voted Tuesday to order a full hearing into Atlanta GasLight’s (AGL) rate charging operations. The hearings will beginFeb.3 and a decision is expected by Feb. 9. The vote took placeduring a regular session of the commission.