Excessive

With June rapidly coming to a close minus excessive heat in most regions of the country, WSI Corp. warned Monday that the July through September time frame might require a little more air conditioning for most parts of the country, Referencing a 30-year normal standard from 1971 to 2000, the Andover, MA-based forecaster said it expects the period to average warmer than normal in all locations except for the Pacific coastal cities, parts of Texas, and the extreme northern tier of states.

Westcoast, which only last Wednesday changed its imbalance tolerance range to zero pack and 20% draft because of excessive linepack (see Daily GPI, Nov. 30), swung in the other direction for Saturday’s gas day by setting a range of 20% pack and zero draft.

Southern California Gas declared an OFO on Timely Cycle nominations for Saturday. The tolerance for excessive deliveries into its system was 10%. The LDC said it would assess Buy-Back charges to violators in accordance with its rules and tariffs. A spokeswoman said the OFO also applied to Friday’s Intraday 1 nominations.

A group calling itself the Mirant Shareholder Rights Group released a statement Monday blasting bankrupt Mirant’s management team for excessive executive compensation in light of their “track record of failures.” The group also accused Mirant management of abusing the bankruptcy process by filing “numerous” motions to seal documents related to asset sales, company valuations and potential litigation against its former parent company.

A day after ending an OFO to combat excessive linepack, Pacific Gas & Electric issued a new systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Saturday. Penalties again were set at $1/Dth for positive daily imbalances, but this time the tolerance was zero instead of the 7% in the earlier order.

Due to an excessive amount of liquids received at the Tivoli Plant onshore Texas Sunday morning, the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System was shut in that day and all receipts and deliveries were scheduled to zero. Return to service is expected by Tuesday, MOPS operator Northern Natural Gas said; it had expected to finish a scheduled pigging project Sunday (see Daily GPI, Dec. 18). Florida Gas Transmission took its scheduled deliveries from MOPS at their interconnect in Matagorda County, TX to zero for Sunday’s gas day and until further notice.

A subsidiary of Calpine Corp. has asked FERC to intervene in a dispute over what it claims are “excessive” collateral demands made by El Paso’s Southern Natural Gas pipeline for service on its 114-mile South System II Expansion project.

Moody’s Investors Service has changed the rating outlooks for Duke Capital and Duke Energy to “negative” from “stable” because of Duke’s report to the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that it engaged in 23 round-trip trades on electronic trading system IntercontinentalExchange (see Daily GPI, July 17 ). Although the $126 million in revenues from the trades “are not material relative to total sales, it causes some concerns about company trading practices and related controls,” Moody’s said.

Moody’s Investors Service has changed the rating outlooks for Duke Capital and Duke Energy to “negative” from “stable” because of Duke’s report to the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that it engaged in 23 round-trip trades on electronic trading system IntercontinentalExchange (see Daily GPI, July 17 ). Although the $126 million in revenues from the trades “are not material relative to total sales, it causes some concerns about company trading practices and related controls,” Moody’s said.