Converging

North America’s natural gas market is further away from converging with the rest of the world than it was five years ago, an energy analyst with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said last week.

North America’s natural gas market is further away from converging with the rest of the world than it was five years ago, an energy analyst with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said Monday.

Economics, politics and public policy pressures seem to be converging against the creation of regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and more cohesive, coherent power markets in the West, according to a consultant and a generators’ representative who spoke at GasMart/Power 2002 last Tuesday in Reno. Although on opposite sides in California’s ongoing electricity restructuring debate, they agreed that regulators and public policymakers need to change their approaches substantially in the future.

Acknowledging the converging and consolidating natural gas and power industries, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioners last week issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (RM01-10) combining the standards of conduct for natural gas pipelines and electric transmission providers and broadening their application to require separation of the regulated monopolies from all other company affiliates.