Face

Except for California softness, prices managed to edgemoderately higher Monday in the face of light weather-relateddemand and only a modicum of screen support. Unless they werelooking ahead to below normal temperatures forecast next week forthe eastern half of the U.S. by the National Weather Service,sources essentially had nothing concrete to which they could pointin explaining the upticks that continued Friday’s mini-rally.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgia natural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating bills risk losing their service, and the threat is so real that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumers delinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. The PSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expires the first day of next month.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgia natural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating bills risk losing their service, and the threat is so real that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumers delinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. The PSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expires the first day of next month.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgianatural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating billsrisk losing their service, and the threat is so real that theGeorgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumersdelinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. ThePSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expiresthe first day of next month.

El Paso and its marketing affiliate El Paso Merchant Energystill face charges of market manipulation through pipeline capacity”hoarding” in a case pending before FERC despite the pipelinecompany’s recent decision to divvy up 1.2 Bcf/d of firm capacityheld by its affiliate among 30 different marketers. Merchant Energyrelinquished all but 277 MMcf/d of firm space on its affiliatedpipeline (see Daily GPI, March 2).

The threat of rolling blackouts hovering over California formore than a month became a reality Wednesday when the state gridoperator (Cal-ISO) ordered them, first, for northern California,and later in the day spreading them to the southern half of thestate.

Western Natural Gas, a Denver-based marketing company, isphasing out its retail marketing business in the face of increasingnatural gas prices and the capital requirements necessary to obtainsupplies.

Reluctantly and in the face of extraordinary pressure fromfinancial, utility and public officials, California regulators lastThursday took initial steps to unfreeze retail electricity ratesfor the state’s two largest investor owned utilities (IOUs) tobegin to cut into the $8 billion of debt dragging down the IOUssince mid-year. An unprecedented lobbying and public communicationseffort by the utilities preceded the action.

Reluctantly and in the face of extraordinary pressure fromfinancial, utility and public officials, California regulatorsThursday took initial steps to unfreeze retail electricity ratesfor the state’s two largest investor owned utilities (IOUs) tobegin to cut into the $8 billion of debt dragging down the IOUssince mid-year. An unprecedented lobbying and public communicationseffort by the utilities preceded the action.