Choice

Montana regulators had little choice but to reject a 15-month-old effort by Australia’s Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) to buy South Dakota-based NorthWestern Energy, and the state’s largest private-sector utility now is poised to do just fine on its own, the state’s chief regulator told NGI last week.

Montana regulators had little choice but to reject a 15-month-old effort by Australian-based Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) to buy South Dakota-based NorthWestern Energy, and the state’s largest private-sector utility now is poised to do just fine on its own, the state’s chief regulator told NGI Wednesday.

Buoyed by geopolitical tension-induced strength in the petroleum markets, natural gas futures had no choice Monday but to go along for the ride. May natural gas put in a low of $6.680 in morning trade, but spent the rest of the afternoon exploring higher territory. The prompt month settled at $6.882, up 13.9 cents on the day.

Saying it had no choice in the face of the skyrocketing wholesale natural gas prices, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission Thursday raised the natural gas rates for Spokane, WA-based Avista Utilities’ 66,000 retail customers in the state by an average of 23.8%, effective Tuesday. The $15.2 million rate hike is strictly to cover the utility’s increased cost of gas supplies.

While characterizing the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. three-year Chapter 11 bankruptcy process as a “political choice” made by a solvent company, a PG&E Corp. executive last Monday chastised the former PG&E merchant energy unit for making a lot of bad market decisions.

While characterizing the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. three-year Chapter 11 bankruptcy process as a “political choice” made by a solvent company, a PG&E Corp. executive Monday chastised the former PG&E merchant energy unit for making a lot of bad market decisions.

Samuel Bodman, President Bush’s choice to be the next energy secretary, was scheduled to be confirmed by the full Senate late Wednesday after receiving the approval of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier in the day.

Given the choice of siding with a bullish hurricane forecast or a bearish technical outlook, the natural gas futures market chose the latter Tuesday as prices gapped lower at the opening bell and tumbled to new two-week lows.

While supplier choice is catching on across the land, Edinburg,TX, Pop. 29,885, is suing its local distribution company forproviding transportation-only service to large end-users.