Dollars

The question of what to do about millions of dollars in refunds from the 2000-2001 energy crisis was passed back to FERC last Thursday by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with instructions to regulators to reconsider their decision in conformance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision last June regarding the long-term power contracts (see NGI, June 30).

MidAmerican Energy Co. and an Iowa-based apartment owner are required to pay nearly half of a million dollars and to carry out remediation of a Superfund site of a former gas plant in Iowa City, IA, under a proposed consent decree published Thursday.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has spent billions upon billions of dollars over the past 30 years on advanced energy technologies in an attempt to diversify the energy portfolio of the United States, but the impact has been minuscule, an official with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told a House panel last Wednesday. He cautioned that the U.S. energy mix was likely to remain unchanged without more leadership at the federal level.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has spent billions upon billions of dollars over the past 30 years on advanced energy technologies in an attempt to diversify the energy portfolio of the United States, but the impact has been minuscule, an official with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told a House panel Wednesday. He cautioned that this is likely to continue if more leadership is not seen at the federal level.

The U.S. House in late July passed a bill that seeks to recover billions of dollars from producers that hold flawed deepwater oil and natural gas leases that were issued by the Interior Department in 1998 and 1999. The provision was inserted at the last minute in a farm bill, which the House approved by 231-191. It would force holders of the flawed 1998-1999 offshore leases to renegotiate their contracts with the Department of Interior or pay a “conservation of resources fee” in order to bid on future government leases. The fee mirrors one that the House passed during the first 100 hours of the Democratic agenda in January (see NGI, Jan. 22). But the fee was excluded from energy legislation the Senate passed last month. Senate Democrats, however, tried to impose an excise tax on oil and gas companies, which Republicans ultimately defeated (see NGI, June 25). The Senate is not expected to take up its version of the farm bill until after the August recess, but Republican opposition is already mounting to the fee insert. A farm bill “is not the right place to decide this issue,” said Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call last week.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call Tuesday.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call Tuesday.

Looking to give people in the energy industry and beyond a way to protect themselves from the billions of dollars in damage incurred during the overly active 2005 hurricane season, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange last week rolled out its CME-Carvill Hurricane Index futures and options. The underlying indexes will be calculated by Carvill, an independent reinsurance intermediary in specialty reinsurance that tracks and calculates hurricane activity.