Doing

Natural gas traders wasted little time doing something Mondaythey have haven’t done in a while — they took profits. Followinga string of four-straight advances, market makers wasted littletime testing Wednesday’s lows in the Sunday night access sessionand then again yesterday morning. The December contract was thehardest hit, shedding 20.9 cents to close at $6.368. Comparatively,the out months fared much better as traders rolled Dec longs intothe summer strip and calendar year 2001, both of which finished inpositive territory on the day.

To help its clients reduce the costs of doing business,DukeSolutions Inc., headquartered in Charlotte, NC, began usingonline energy auctions last week to lower the cost of natural gas,reduce procurement charges and speed up contract executions for its20 client facilities in the Midwest.

To help its clients reduce the costs of doing business,DukeSolutions Inc., headquartered in Charlotte, NC, has begun usingonline energy auctions to lower the cost of natural gas, reduceprocurement charges and speed up contract executions for its 20client facilities in the Midwest.

The cash market was doing a skyrocket imitation Monday amidsignificant fundamental influences, along with a large dose ofsupport from both natural gas and oil futures. Only a fewRockies/Pacific Northwest and Western Canada points failed to riseby about 20 cents or more (MRT and ANR ML-7 were among theexceptions elsewhere).

Those fireworks you may have heard Thursday were Northeastcitygate prices doing their best skyrocket imitations. While therest of the cash market was considerably more mundane with pricesranging from flat to only a few cents higher, Transco’s Zone 6-NYCpool and Algonquin citygates in New England were making eye-poppingdollar-plus jumps.

Two top-10 national energy marketers, Aquila Energy and EngageEnergy, started doing business July 29 in California on EnergyMarketplace, the retail natural gas and electricity Internetshopping center operated by Southern California Gas Co. Decliningto provide dollar or transaction volume statistics on the nearlytwo-year-old site, the nation’s first retail energy Internetshopping site, a SoCalGas spokesperson would only say that thereare other major announcements regarding Energy Marketplace that arepending and should be made in the near future.

Resistance to hedging has declined significantly amongindependent producers. But now that they’re hedging, some companiesare doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, according toexecutives at Statoil Energy.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission needs to “do a completeoverhaul of its cost of service ratemaking model,” according toproducer attorney Katherine Edwards, because the rates currently inplace on many pipelines no longer reflect the costs.

FERC is not doing its job if it hides behind the letter of thelaw and refuses to recognize abuses of market power merely becausethe abusers are staying within the bounds of maximum lawful rates.That was the decision on April 9 of the D.C. Court of Appeals,which found an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ina case involving rates charged by Southern California Gas”arbitrary and capricious.” (Southern California Edison v. FERC,No. 97-1699). Now Exxon Co. U.S.A. has asked FERC to reopen a caseinvolving Dynegy’s long-term leasing of unsubscribed capacity on ElPaso Natural Gas (RP97-287-010), saying the two cases are directlyrelated.