Empire

Lower natural gas prices will have an effect on National Fuel Gas’ (NFG) bottom line in 2011, but the company will continue to ramp up its drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale during the year, CEO David F. Smith said during a conference call with financial analysts Friday.

In the midst of a regional trucking transportation hub in the Inland Empire 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, a regional government association is leveraging state and federal grants totaling nearly $20 million with a major national trucking company, Ryder System Inc., to put hundreds of compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) rigs on the road.

Portland, OR-based merchant energy developer PPM Energy is still getting used to being part of the $100 billion international empire of Spain-based Iberdrola, and now it faces a new corporate structure as the Spanish behemoth announced it plans to consolidate all of its renewable energy businesses and spin them off into a new company in an initial public offering (IPO) early next year.

In what its sponsors are calling an engineering marvel, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will begin Monday the key phase of a $56.9 million underground storage reliability upgrade. It involves what the utility is calling the longest 24-inch-diameter natural gas pipeline pull ever conducted in the West.

Only one energy company, Empire District Electric Co. of Joplin, MO, had its credit ratings downgraded during the last quarter, while three other major energy companies were upgraded, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) said Monday in a second quarter report. The ratings firm called it the “strongest surge” in years.

FERC last week launched Federal Power Act Section 206 investigations of Tampa Electric Co. and the Empire District Electric Co. after filings made by the two utilities indicated that they had failed a FERC wholesale market share screen. The Section 206 proceedings will examine whether the utilities have market power in generation.

Power producers in the Empire State are preparing to make a full-court press after this November’s elections to get New York State lawmakers to reinstate a power plant siting law that expired at the end of 2002, the CEO of the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY) told NGI.

Subject to bankruptcy court approval and the results of an auction process, TransCanada Pipelines plans to buy Gas Transmission Northwest Corp. (GTN) from National Energy & Gas Transmission (NEGT) for US$1.703 billion, including US$500 million of assumed debt. The deal would extend TransCanada’s massive Canadian pipeline grid through the Pacific Northwest to California and Nevada.

Williams’ once mighty pipeline empire has been decimated by the corporation’s financial troubles and its executive personnel have been cut as well, according to a notice appearing Tuesday on the Northwest Pipeline electronic bulletin board.