Deals

Last week began with a couple of energy industry heavyweights announcing preliminary deals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies to be brought to proposed terminals along the North Baja Pacific coast in Mexico and ended with Sempra Energy’s CEO promising to build the first LNG terminal there.

Normally friendly and past partners in various deals, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Calpine Corp. are at odds over what the utility alleges is the merchant power plant developer/operator’s conspiring with merchant natural gas storage operators at Lodi in Northern California to bypass the PG&E utility backbone pipeline transmission system. As a result, PG&E’s utility alleges that natural gas retail customers could pay an extra $20 million.

Kinder Morgan Inc. said subsidiary Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL) has locked up all of its firm transportation capacity under contract through October and most of it through March 2004.

Kinder Morgan Inc. said subsidiary Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL) has locked up all of its firm transportation capacity under contract through October and most of it through March 2004.

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.

Mirant last week said that it has agreed to provide electricity to Unitil Energy Systems Inc. for transition and default service to Unitil’s New Hampshire customers. The agreement was approved by the New Hampshire Public Utility Commission (NHPUC) last Friday.

Once the holder of one of the largest electricity supply deals with California, Allegheny Energy Supply said last week it has filed claims with the state’s Board of Control for what it alleges are “monetary damages” inflicted on it by the state’s “bad-faith actions” abrogating a long-term supply deal. State actions, which still have not terminated the deal, nevertheless have caused the company “significant negative financial” problems, Allegheny said.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has released its 2002 Master Agreement, a widely used standardized contract for the derivatives trading industry, with several modifications designed to reflect changes in the industry over the last decade.

ANR Pipeline locked in a stable source of income for the next eight years by renegotiating firm transportation and storage agreements with its largest customer, Wisconsin utility We Energies, covering 866,500 Dth/d of service starting in 2003 and extending under various terms to 2010. Many of the contracts were due to expire in 2003.