Debut

Winter made its official debut Sunday, but outside of the Rockies and Upper Plains there was little evidence of the season Monday. Forecasts of continuing relatively mild weather through the weekend helped accelerate the price declines that had begun Friday. Monday’s losses were generally in the range of 35-85 cents, with most exceeding half a dollar.

The “most significant” and what likely will prove to be the “most expensive” rule mandating periodic inspections of interstate and intrastate natural gas pipelines will be posted to the web site of the Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) Friday and published in the Federal Register on Monday (Dec. 15), according to OPS and pipeline company officials.

ChevronTexaco Natural Gas, to be headquartered in Houston and staffed by as many as 100 energy traders, will enter the wholesale energy merchant business in April, backed by a corporate “AA” credit rating, strong finances resources and perhaps as important, no “baggage,” after severing long-term natural gas purchase and sales contracts with Dynegy Inc. on Friday.

After years of bickering, protests and heated controversy, Guardian Pipeline has been completed and is scheduled to begin delivering natural gas supplies to northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin markets before mid-December, says a spokesman for CMS Energy, a partner in the pipeline. But there is one glitch.

After years of bickering, protests and heated controversy, Guardian Pipeline has been completed and is scheduled to begin delivering natural gas supplies to northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin markets before mid-December, says a spokesman for CMS Energy, a partner in the pipeline. But there is one glitch.

While the western energy moguls slept, AMP took over for California’s electric transmission grid operator, CAISO, as an automatic screening agent to throw out any anomalous wholesale electricity bids into its real-time balancing market. It came one second past midnight Wednesday morning, ushering in FERC’s $250/MWh soft cap, but using the $91.87/MWh old cap as the heart of the three-step screening process. AMP stands for “automated mitigation procedure.”

Duke Energy Gas Transmission (DEGT) said last week that two of its projects — the Freehold project and the Hanging Rock project — approved recently by FERC will use a new rate schedule that allows customers to contract for firm hourly swing service on subsidiary Texas Eastern Transmission laterals.

The November aftermarket started out with a hodgepodge of price movement compared with both first-of-month indexes and end-of-October numbers. Generally the West could be characterized as moderately stronger in both instances Wednesday, while eastern points tended to range from flat to a few cents lower. But there were discrepancies, primarily in the East where scattered points realized gains from gas traded for Oct. 31 flow.

A Houston-based source characterized the situation: “People just have no idea where this market is going to settle.” That was telling it like it is Friday, as the July aftermarket began substantially below first-of-month indexes and even further removed from end-of-June pricing.