Climate

Recent six- to 10-day temperature outlooks by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) have been off by a mile, and CPC Senior Forecaster Ed O’Lenic admits the atmospheric situation currently is the “kind that forecasters dread.”

California’s topsy-turvy fiscal and political climate this summer, with a $38 billion annual budget deficit still waiting to be patched over, does not immediately impact the standing of the state’s former wholesale net-short power buyer, the Department of Water Resources (DWR), but it could longer term, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) said Monday in a terse credit report.

More than compensating for the company’s poor refining results, BP’s Exploration and Production (E&P) segment boosted net income to $651 million for the fourth quarter, compared to a loss of $603 million in the year earlier quarter. For full-year 2002, net income increased to $6.85 billion from $6.56 billion in 2001. Sales on the year increased to $202.5 billion from $200 billion.

All of the climate trends pointed to this past winter as being especially cold, and the warm weather completely “baffled” one of the leading meteorologists in the country. However, the warm outcome only pointed to how difficult long-term seasonal forecasting is and how much is still being learned in making predictions, said Jon Davis, the chief meteorologist for Salomon Smith Barney on Wednesday at the GasMart/Power 2002 conference in Reno.

In the ever-changing climate of energy deregulation, portfoliomanagement tools, such as weather hedging and storage control, arebecoming more vital, a panel of industry experts said Thursday atthe LDC Forum Conference in Boston, MA.