Clock

With the clock ticking down to election day, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin last week tried to capture the vote of producers and other proponents of onshore and offshore drilling, saying that a McCain administration would support a policy of “drill here and drill now.”

The New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) solved the dilemma of how to take its electronic energy trading to a round-the-clock schedule. Nymex Holdings Inc. reported Thursday that it has entered into a technology services agreement with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), under which the CME will become the exclusive electronic trading services provider for Nymex’s energy futures and options contracts.

The clock is ticking on a time bomb with potential to disrupt the smooth course of free trade in natural gas to which the continental market has become accustomed, a Canadian economic think-tank has warned.

The clock is ticking on a time bomb with potential to disrupt the smooth course of cross border free trade in natural gas, a Canadian economic think-tank has warned.

It was appropriately Halloween when the clock struck midnight for California’s electricity financing woes. A short-term, $4.3 billion “bridge” loan for buying wholesale electricity supplies reverted to a higher-interest, three-year term loan, adding to the costs of the state’s foray into power buying at a time when a statewide economic summit was scheduled to take place over the weekend to re-energize the state’s economy.

FERC’s mid-June order expanding price-mitigation around the clock and to the entire western region came under sharp attack from power marketers and generators last week, with some saying it could lead to an “inevitable exodus of marketers” and a “new wave” generation project cancellations in the West.

When the clock strikes midnight tonight on the West Coast,California’s state legislature, which has been known to stop theCapitol clocks at 11:59 p.m. in similar occasions, will eitherprovide some ways out of the state’s electricity problems or watchits efforts turn back into the pumpkin that has represented thissummer’s high bills and short power supplies.

BP Amoco and Atlantic Richfield Co. plan to take the next formalstep to close their merger by restarting the required 20-day noticeperiod, suspended Nov. 2, to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).The companies concede the FTC has concerns about their pairing, butthe merger partners said they don’t agree with the issues raised bythe commission.