Coast

For natural gas customers in Floyd-ravaged areas of the EastCoast it’s not over yet. Some are still underwater in NorthCarolina and others in New Jersey may not get gas service backuntil the end of the week.

As Floyd wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast last week,Hurricane FERC wrought its own brand of torrent on new pipelineconstruction. Shifting its policy more toward a market-based andconsumer-oriented focus, the Commission voted out (4-1) a policystatement eliminating set requirements for supporting contracts andany presumption for rolled-in pricing that would raise the rates ofexisting customers.

NGPL reported experiencing an unexpected pipeline outageSaturday south of Station 304 on the Gulf Coast Mainline. Untilfurther notice NGPL is unable to flow volumes from six receiptpoints in Panola County, TX.

TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. has put its U.S. Gulf coast midstreamfacilities andpetroleum and products marketing and tradingbusinesses on the block, continuing to slim down assets to its coretransmission holdings.

TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. has put its Gulf Coast midstreamfacilities and its U.S. petroleum and products marketing andtrading businesses on the block, continuing to slim down to itscore transmission holdings.

Reliant Energy improved its West Coast portfolio last week byannouncing a six-year agreement with the Springfield, IL municipalutility City Water, Light and Power (CWLP) to market its total 600MW generation. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Quotes for late December gas and the January bidweek tended tomove a few cents higher Wednesday. A Gulf Coast trader felt Januarycash had moved up about a nickel “in sympathy with the cold weathersweeping across most of the nation.”

Traders had to think about the unthinkable Friday: Gulf Coastgas trading for less than a dollar. A large number of points inLouisiana and Texas averaged in the $0.90s, and in a few caseslow-end quotes slipped into the high $0.80s. Few markets fared muchabove a dollar other than California, Sumas, Stanfield andColumbia-Appalachia.

Triple-digit temperatures throughout much of California inlandfrom the Pacific Coast spurred record energy demand, promptingstate and utility officials to call for voluntary cutbacks inelectricity usage on the eve of the Labor Day holiday weekend.Collectively, August turned out to be California’s hottest ever,further testing the reliability of the new power system in thestate.As Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electricand the nation’s largest municipal utility, the City of Los AngelesDepartment of Water and Power, all registered record power demandMonday, a corresponding record for natural gas delivered toelectric generating plants was marked at Southern California Gas,which transports supplies to all three electric utilities. Gassupplies for power generation equaled 1.92 Bcf/d on Monday,surpassing a one-day record set Aug. 11, 1994 (1.877 Bcf), and aspokesperson for SoCalGas said with the prediction of more hotweather later in the week, “there is a chance we will surpass thenew record.”