Defeat

As one of two indicators that natural gas for transportation is still alive and well in California despite a ballot measure defeat last month, T. Boone Pickens’ gas-powered transportation company, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., said last Monday it has won a 10-year contract with the City of Glendale, CA, to build and operate a new large-scale public access compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling facility to support the city’s expanding CNG-powered vehicle fleets. The following day Sempra Energy and local officials kicked off a switch to CNG-powered cargo trucks in Southern California’s two teeming ports.

In a stunning defeat, the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) unanimously rejected an Australian company’s $2.2 billion bid to buy NorthWestern Energy. The PSC said the purchase would put Montana consumers at risk for higher rates and poor service.

Conceding defeat following word that Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) members and shareholders had voted Monday in favor of merging with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) (see Daily GPI, July 10), Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) said late Monday that while it was disappointed in the outcome, it thought the process was beneficial for its own stockholders as well as for stockholders of CBOT.

In a stunning defeat, the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) last week unanimously rejected an Australian company’s $2.2 billion bid to buy NorthWestern Energy. The PSC said the purchase would put Montana consumers at risk for higher rates and poor service.

Alaskan voters last Tuesday gifted the oil and gas industry with a Republican governor and defeat of a controversial tax on natural gas reserves.

Alaskan voters Tuesday gifted the oil and gas industry with a Republican governor and defeat of a controversial tax on natural gas reserves.

A federal district court in Salt Lake City late Wednesday handed the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a defeat in its fight to open up more federal lands to oil and natural gas leasing, ruling that BLM violated federal environmental laws when it sold leases on 16 parcels of so-called “wilderness-quality lands” in southern Utah.

FERC’s proposal to loosen the rules for granting market-based rates for new natural gas storage projects, with the goal of speeding an increase in storage capacity and thereby mitigating market peaks and valleys and consequently price volatility, has brought a storm of comments from interested parties on how the rules should be written.

Conceding defeat to the courts, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted last Wednesday to eliminate the contract term limit for incumbent pipeline shippers who exercise their rights of first refusal (ROFR) to retain transportation capacity under contracts that are due to expire shortly. The decision was a blow to existing pipeline shippers, who believed FERC’s requirement of a five-year term matching cap under ROFR thwarted potential abuses.