Competing

At least one of the proponents competing to build California’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal has squared off in a state regulatory proceeding with Sempra Energy’s two utilities over future transmission rights for getting regasified LNG into the utilities’ backbone transmission pipeline system in Southern California.

Citing it as the “best value” of several competing offers, NorthWestern Energy’s CEO Wednesday predicted that the $2.2 billion sale to Australian-based Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) will put the South Dakota-based energy holding company in a stronger financial position, with local management operating in a “business as usual” fashion in a deal that should clear all regulatory hurdles quickly.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, took to the Senate floor Wednesday to offer a compromise between competing Democratic and Republican energy proposals. He said he would support the Democrats’ proposal for a gasoline tax holiday if they would back Republicans’ efforts to spur more energy production.

Although two competing pipelines, designed to bring up to 1.7 Bcf/d of gas to Florida from LNG terminals in the Bahamas, already have completed the regulatory process in the United States, El Paso Corp. proved Wednesday its Seafarer Pipeline project is not out of the picture just yet. But will southern Florida really need 2.5 Bcf/d of new pipeline capacity and gas supply in the 2007-2008 timeframe?

Natural gas futures Wednesday remained locked in a battle between the competing forces of fundamental bearishness and technical bullishness. Buyers were the first to exert their influence Wednesday, propelling the prompt month to a $4.90 high in the first 35 minutes of trading. Bears battled back, however, and rerouted the market to the downside ahead of Thursday’s release of fresh storage data. December futures closed at $4.738, down 12.7 cents for the session.

With a competing reorganization plan by state regulators now formally filed in Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s year-old Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, it is clearer that the quickest, least-legally exhausting solution is a mediated settlement, and that may be the ultimate trump card if both sides are correct in their assessment of the insurmountable legal obstacles facing their opposing positions.

Adding to the recent flurry of natural gas storage projects headed for Mississippi to serve the Southeast, Petal Gas Storage LLC, a subsidiary of El Paso Energy Partners LP, said Thursday that it is holding a non-binding open season for up to 5 Bcf of firm natural gas storage capacity in order to evaluate market interest in proposed plans to expand its facility in Petal, MS. The capacity is anticipated to be available for use by Jan. 1, 2004.

Natural gas storage a-plenty appears to be headed toward Mississippi in the form of two salt dome cavern projects, both of which are scheduled to come on-line in late 2003. The separate projects sponsored by Bedminster, NJ-based NUI Corp. and Houston-based SGR Holdings LLC, expect to bring a combined 26 Bcf of gas storage to the region.

Florida just got two steps closer to being flooded by naturalgas via two proposed pipelines. The competing Gulfstream andBuccaneer pipeline projects, which would extend from Mobile, AL,across the Gulf of Mexico to the west coast of Florida and tomarkets across the Florida peninsula, are neck and neck in theirregulatory race after receiving preliminary approvals onnon-environmental grounds from the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission (FERC) yesterday.