Drawn

The Senate Banking Committee voted out legislation overhauling the financial reform in less than a half hour late Monday. The measure has drawn fire from the energy industry for its failure to provide end-users, such as industrial consumers and producers, with an exemption from the proposed clearing and trading requirements for the nearly $500 trillion over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market.

The Senate Banking Committee voted out legislation overhauling the financial reform in less than a half hour late Monday. The measure has drawn fire from the energy industry for its failure to provide end-users, such as industrial consumers and producers, with an exemption from the proposed clearing and trading requirements for the nearly $500 trillion over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market.

FERC’s recent decisions on gas quality standards for Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) in a precedent-setting case ( RP04-249) affecting LNG have drawn criticism from both ends and the pipeline itself: from suppliers who claim it will severely limit LNG imports, to power generators who claim the Commission should have provided cost mitigation for end users whose equipment must be changed to handle a different gas quality.

FERC’s recent decisions on gas quality standards for Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) in a precedent-setting case ( RP04-249) affecting LNG have drawn criticism from both ends and the pipeline itself: from suppliers who claim it will severely limit LNG imports, to power generators who claim the Commission should have provided cost mitigation for end users whose equipment must be changed to handle a different gas quality.

CMS Energy said Friday it agreed to pay $200 million to settle shareholder class action lawsuits related to “round-trip” trades made by a Texas subsidiary in 2000-2002.

As part of a full year-end consent agenda, California regulators Thursday quietly passed a number of items that in the past have drawn a lot of discussion — the leading one being technical changes to the massive 10-year California Solar Initiative (CSI) to bolster small, onsite distributed solar systems. At issue was cutting the program’s overall budget from around $3 billion to less than $2.5 billion. The effort is supposed to produce “a million solar roofs” with photovoltaic (PV) systems and 3,000 MW of solar-produced electricity.

With nearly 18 Bcf/d of new LNG import capacity approved for development along the Gulf Coasts of Texas and Louisiana and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, Transcontinental Gas PipeLine has drawn up plans for a mainline expansion project between compressor stations 45 and 85 in Louisiana. It also is planning to expand its system by about 700,000 Dth/d from Station 85 to a connection with affiliate Gulfstream Natural Gas along its Mobile Bay Lateral.

After a drawn out and at times contentious process that pitted Illinois power companies against the state’s attorney general, governor and a leading utility watchdog group, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) last Tuesday voted unanimously to authorize Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and several Ameren companies — Central Illinois Public Service, Central Illinois Light Co. and Illinois Power — to conduct a joint auction to purchase electricity to serve nearly 4.9 million customers.

The Republican-crafted energy bill has drawn Democratic fire on a host of provisions affecting the oil and natural gas industry, which they say will “raid the Treasury for billions.”