Diego

Although it is still awaiting its first commercial cargoes, San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s newest liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal at Cameron along the southwest Louisiana coast was officially opened last Wednesday with the help of Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sempra CEO Donald Felsinger. The $900 million receiving terminal can process up to 1.5 Bcf/d.

Although it is still awaiting its first commercial cargoes, San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s newest liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal at Cameron along the southwest Louisiana coast was officially opened Wednesday with the help of Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sempra CEO Donald Felsinger. The $900 million receiving terminal can process up to 1.5 Bcf/d.

Energy Capital Partners (ECP) has formed Summit Midstream Partners LLC to acquire and develop midstream assets in traditional and emerging North American production basins and import centers with an initial focus on the Barnett Shale.

The joint trading venture between the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and San Diego-based Sempra Energy, RBS Sempra Commodities, announced two more top executive selections Tuesday, which means the successful energy and metals trading operation is now under the control of three former top executives from bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

Getting some much-needed start-up cargoes for its new Gulf of Mexico liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, San Diego-based Sempra Energy announced last Monday it has signed a “flexible” short-term agreement for up to 50 LNG shipments from Qatar through the end of next year. Cargoes equivalent to about 4.8 Bcf each will be shipped to Sempra LNG’s Cameron facility near Lake Charles, LA, starting this August.

Getting some much-needed start-up cargoes for its new Gulf of Mexico liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, San Diego-based Sempra Energy announced Monday it has signed a “flexible” short-term agreement for up to 50 LNG shipments from Qatar through the end of next year. Cargoes equivalent to about 4.8 Bcf each will be shipped to Sempra LNG’s Cameron facility near Lake Charles, LA, starting this August.

Sempra Energy’s two California utilities, Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) and San Diego Gas and Electric Co. (SDG&E), were ranked highest for customer satisfaction among the largest U.S. investor-owned energy utilities (IOU) in the first quarter of this year, according to a recently completed survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The utilities announced their top ranking in the University of Michigan survey that measures customer satisfaction across 10 economic sectors, 44 industries and more than 200 companies, along with federal and local government agencies. SoCalGas and SDG&E scored the highest in residential customer satisfaction of the 29 largest IOUs. The ACSI survey used a uniform system to measure customer satisfaction, quality of service, value, reliability and the ability to restore power after outages.

RBS Sempra Commodities, the joint venture energy and metals trading business of UK-based Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and San Diego-based Sempra Energy, hired a new CEO, Kaushik Amin, who most recently spent 14 years at Lehman Brothers where he rose to head the investment bank’s trading operations. Amin will report to Peter Nielsen, global head of markets at RBS’ global banking and markets division. Amin replaces David Messer, who resigned the RBS Sempra CEO position in late March (see Daily GPI, March 26). In the interim, Sempra CFO Mark Snell and Jeremy Wright, chief administrative officer of RBS Markets, had jointly headed the commodities trading joint venture. Amin holds a mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, India, and a master’s degree in operations research and a Ph.D. in finance from Cornell University.

San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s aggressive natural gas pipeline and storage plays, particularly tied to the Gulf of Mexico, could take a hit of up to $55 million if current assessments of the cavern prove negative in its salt dome Liberty Storage project in Louisiana, Sempra CEO Donald Felsinger said in an earnings conference call last Tuesday. Definitive information should be available in the next two to three months, he said.