Country

Echoing the warnings of many other utilities across the country, Alabama Gas Corp. (Alagasco) told its gas customers Wednesday that higher bills are on the way this coming heating season. Following Piedmont Natural Gas’ lead earlier in the week, the utility also called for the implementation of a comprehensive national energy strategy, which it believes is necessary to address high natural gas prices (see Daily GPI, July 8).

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) plans to hold four public workshops across the country in the next three weeks to hear from the public about possibly revising the 15-year-old Federal Gas Valuation Rule, used to determine royalties due on natural gas from federal leases.

While most agree the easy supply growth is over in Canada, the country’s top natural gas producer is showing it still pays to venture into the difficult parts of the western provinces.

In reaction to the arrival of the much-anticipated blast of cold air in the eastern half of the country, natural gas futures rocketed higher Wednesday as early short-covering by funds and commercials triggered waves of buy-stop-loss orders. By virtue of its $5.50 high trade, February notched a new all-time contract top and traded within 3 cents of the 21-month prompt-month high made by the January contract on Dec. 13. It closed at $5.43, up 32.3 cents for the session.

With more and more natural gas-fired plants going into operation around the country, pipelines must master a balancing act of serving traditional local distribution companies (LDC), while catering to the new power plant on the block.

With more and more natural gas-fired plants going into operation around the country, pipelines must master a balancing act of serving traditional local distribution companies (LDC), while catering to the new power plant on the block.

The ability of FERC to successfully form regional transmission organizations (RTOs) throughout the country will in large measure be tied to how much cooperation and support federal regulators receive from their counterparts at the state level, a key FERC staff member told an audience of energy attorneys in Washington, DC, last Thursday.

Deregulation within the U.S. power industry is losing momentum, and to move the country beyond the current “crisis of confidence” to a fully workable, deregulated marketplace, 12 policy and structural changes at a minimum need to be implemented, according to a study released Tuesday by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). The study concluded that the only way for deregulation to move forward is to adopt the game plan used by regions where competition is already in place.

With the drought that plagued the northwest region of the country for most of 2001 appearing to be over, the resulting increase in hydropower will likely not put natural gas-fired generation out of business, according to Raymond James & Associates Inc. in its Stat of the Week. Raymond James analyst J. Marshall Adkins said the negative impact on gas-fired electricity generation from the increase in hydropower will be mostly offset by a reduction in nuclear power generation in 2002.