Efforts

Nicor Inc. saw its stock price nearly cut in half Friday morning after reporting a slew of bad news, some of which also spilled over on Dynegy Inc., a joint venture partner. Nicor, long considered a stable old-line utility investment, stunned the market by reversing all of its first quarter earnings and excluding all of its second quarter earnings for a rate program used by subsidiary Nicor Gas, which contributed to a 36% drop in second quarter earnings. The board of directors in turn moved into action, appointing a special, independent committee to investigate the subsidiary’s natural gas purchases, sales, transportation and storage.

Several energy sellers recently offered firm denials to Texas regulators that they attempted to manipulate energy markets in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) by utilizing tactics adopted by former energy trading giant Enron Corp. in California or by executing trades designed to artificially boost trading volumes and revenues. In a few cases, generators acknowledged to the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) that they completed a few isolated contemporaneous or prearranged trades, but that such activity was on the up-and-up and for valid business reasons only.

Brought lower by taking a one-time charge for severance and an impairment related to the adoption of new accounting standards, Topeka, KS-based Western Resources reported a consolidated net loss of $652.4 million (-$9.14 per share) in the first quarter of 2002, compared to net earnings of $ 4.5 million ($0.06 per share) in the 2001 quarter.

Efforts by the Alliance Companies and the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) to hammer out an agreement that would allow the Alliance Transmission Co. to fall under the broader MISO regional transmission organization (RTO) umbrella have hit a bump in the road, Alliance told FERC last week.

Building on its efforts to move away from a hub-and-spoke approach in determining market power, FERC last week lifted the curtain on a new interim power generation market screen to be used in analyzing market-based rates, and found three utilities, Entergy, Southern Co., and AEP, that didn’t pass the test.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has signaled that he will step up efforts to lobby his brother’s administration to deny drilling permits in the Destin Dome gas field off of the state’s coast, where three major producers own 11 leases that have sat idle for more than a decade.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signaled last week that he will step up efforts to lobby his brother’s administration to deny drilling permits in the Destin Dome gas field off of the state’s coast, where three major producers own 11 leases that have sat idle for more than a decade.

Efforts by the General Accounting Office (GAO) to assess the outlook for California’s electricity supplies this summer were stymied by a lack of key information and data limitations, the government agency recently told Congress. Among other things, the GAO said that several requests to look at electric power purchase contracts in the state were rebuffed by officials with the office of Gov. Gray Davis on the grounds that if such information was handed over, there was a risk that contract details could wind up in the public domain, threatening future contract negotiations.

Following through on previous threats of legal action, PPL Montana yesterday asked a federal court to declare efforts by the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) to regulate sales from the company’s power plants as being unconstitutional.