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A federal appeals court on Tuesday vacated a pipeline rate decision and sent it back to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a second time, calling the “different rationales” cited by the agency for approving significantly higher initial Section 7 rates for natural gas transportation service on the then-Kansas Pipeline Co. “arbitrary and capricious.”

Although gas prices are nearly $2/MMBtu lower than they were in early June and show no signs of substantially reversing course, ever-bullish analysts at Raymond James & Associates devoted their “Stat of the Week” outlook to making a case for a significant rebound in the August natural gas market. Others experts, however, aren’t buying it.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Friday postponed a hearing to consider the nomination of former New Mexico regulator Suedeen G. Kelly for a seat on FERC until September, expressing concern that Kelly could face hostile questions if her confirmation hearing were held now due to the hot-button nature of ongoing negotiations over the electricity title and energy legislation. Her hearing had been scheduled for July 16.

FERC staff is expected to release a paper on Friday that will lay out various options for the Commission to consider as it tries to improve the system for collecting and compiling index prices for natural gas.

Prosecutors wading through the burgeoning and expensive Enron Corp. case may consider charges in the next month related to Whitewing and Yosemite, two of the company’s partnerships that helped the former energy merchant create cash flow and hide assets.

Noting that some participants in the energy sector might consider his group to be the “perpetual natural gas bulls,” Raymond James & Assoc. analyst Marshall Adkins said the market has proven that “we have, in fact, been overly bearish.” Citing the summer gas storage re-fill problem, Adkins said that Raymond James is once again upping its 2003 gas price forecast from $5/Mcf to $6/Mcf.

Noting that some participants in the energy sector might consider his group to be the “perpetual natural gas bulls,” Raymond James & Assoc. analyst Marshall Adkins said the market has once again proven that “we have, in fact, been overly bearish.” Citing the summer gas storage re-fill problem, Adkins said that Raymond James is once again upping its 2003 gas price forecast from $5/Mcf to $6/Mcf.

Transco said Tuesday it will “strongly consider issuing an Imbalance Operational Flow Order” due to below normal temperatures throughout much of its market area. “Market pricing and continued cold weather make it likely that current negative transportation imbalances will not be reduced. Transco cannot continue to manage these imbalances given current storage inventory levels and reduced operating flexibility. Absent immediate, voluntary resolution of shippers’ negative imbalances,” the OFO is a possibility, Transco said. The pipeline also noted that it will not accept any delivery make-up nominations for the rest of February 2003 and that pooling point tolerances had been tightened to 1% for negative imbalances.

As FERC mulls whether to require generators to certify that outages at their facilities are due to a valid, technical reason, a leading academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last Wednesday suggested that operators of power plants adopt a protocol for how they “call” outages, which in turn would be audited internally and ultimately signed off on by top corporate executives with power suppliers.