Facing

Facing softer wholesale natural gas prices this winter compared with last year, Tucson-based UniSource Energy last month dropped a surcharge for its gas utility customers in northern Arizona that are served by its UniSource Energy Services (UES) unit. UES’s per-therm gas service rate in December will be $1.12, and the utility said it expects the rate to remain the same through the winter.

U.S. exploration and production (E&P) companies that use full-cost accounting methods could be facing sizable third quarter write-downs because of lower natural gas prices, an energy analyst said in a note to clients this week.

Energy security is the highest-ranking issue facing the global industry, which in turn demands action and poses a “high level of uncertainty” in both the short- and long-term, according to a survey of energy company CEOs by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). And the “dash for gas,” created when natural gas became the fuel of choice for new power generation worldwide, has created additional security issues that need to be addressed.

Facing the stark realities of California’s heavily natural gas-dependent power supplies, Southern California Edison Co. Wednesday announced plans to issue a request for offers (RFO) next month for natural gas supply contracts and financial hedge products stretching out almost five years. The Edison International utility said it received a “robust response” to its Dec. 12 request for information from potential suppliers.

Producers in the Rocky Mountain region could be facing that age-old problem of inadequate pipeline takeaway capacity and widening basis later this year as production continues to grow at a rapid pace, according to Golden, CO-based consulting firm Bentek Energy.

Financially battered Calpine Corp. ended the week squarely facing a date with destiny, but how soon the day would come was still unknown.

Outgoing Sempra Energy CEO Steve Baum said he expects to have the bulk of the energy crisis-spawned litigation facing the company resolved in settlements by the time he retires in January next year.

With natural gas consumers across much of the U.S. facing potentially steep increases in their natural gas bills this winter, an energy attorney and former FERC general counsel, on Wednesday predicted that “at some point soon we will see somebody in Congress call for the reregulation of natural gas wellhead prices.”

Resource adequacy is the most pressing issue facing the power industry today, a top official with Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) said last Wednesday. There is a trend toward the issuance of request for proposals (RFP) to meet this challenge, but solicitations for capacity with long-term and short-term contracts are not necessarily silver bullets, CERA found.