Deliberates

Before a packed crowd at FERC last Thursday, scores of energy industry and publication executives proposed improvements in the system of collecting and compiling index prices for natural gas. Nearly everybody agreed that the current system is broken, but they were sharply divided over how to reform it. Energy publishers said their price indexes can and are being fixed. Critics, however, weren’t satisfied and said a complete overhaul was in order. The flaws in the system have been magnified by the “bright light being shown on the process” in the wake of charges that traders had manipulated the published indexes for years.