Fails

Senate leadership canned an attempt by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) to force a vote on the adoption of energy legislation as amendments to the defense authorization bill. Inhofe had submitted Sen. Frank Murkowski’s energy bill and the House energy legislation (H.R. 4) as prospective amendments to the $340 billion defense spending bill.

Senate leadership canned an attempt by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) to force a vote on the adoption of energy legislation as amendments to the defense authorization bill. Inhofe had submitted Sen. Frank Murkowski’s energy bill and the House energy legislation (H.R. 4) as prospective amendments to the $340 billion defense spending bill.

The power is still off on Texas’ deregulation pilot, which was scheduled to finally begin last Friday after its June 1 ramp-up was shut down in late May (see NGI, May 28). Pilot customers now won’t have service from their new retail electric providers until at least July 20, and maybe even later, according to the Texas Public Utility Commission.

The power is still off on Texas’ deregulation pilot, which was scheduled to finally begin today after its June 1 ramp-up was shut down in late May (see Daily GPI, May 23). Pilot customers now won’t have service from their new retail electric providers until at least July 20, and maybe even later, according to the Texas Public Utility Commission.

If the Texas Public Utilities Commission is measuring the projected success of its deregulation program by the pilot program set to begin this summer, officials might wonder if they’re doing something wrong. Electric deregulation takes effect across the state on Jan. 1, but so far, it appears that customers — especially residential ones — are a little wary of how it works and what they will get out of it.

Despite the AGA’s report of a much larger-than-expected storageinjection of 72 Bcf last week, there was plenty of otherfundamental news to keep this bull market steaming full speedahead. Prices generally moved 5 to 10 cents higher across the boardwith the largest increases in the Midcontinent and Gulf Coastregions.

If the staff of the Senate Energy and Natural ResourcesCommittee fails to reach agreement today on two contentious areasin electricity restructuring — the extent of FERC jurisdictionover interstate transmission and whether to include a renewableportfolio standard — the Democratic and Republican committeeleaders, may drop efforts to pass a comprehensive bill this year infavor of a stripped-down measure addressing reliability.

Commonwealth Edison announced a voluntary pilot program thatwill automatically pay its customers if it fails to live up to itscommitment to reduce electric service interruptions, provide fasterservice restoration when outages do occur and deliver bettercommunication with customers and governmental bodies aboutservice-related issues. Developed in partnership with theMetropolitan Mayors Caucus and the City of Chicago, ComEd said itpledges to automatically pay business and residential customerswhose service has been interrupted as a result ofutility-controlled circumstances. Under the plan, qualifyingresidential and business customers will receive about the averageof one month’s electric service for each outage that exceeds eighthours or if they experience three or more outages, each of four ormore hours in length, during a two-month period. Business customerswould receive $100 credit on their account balance, whileresidential customers would receive a check for $60 for eachqualified outage. In addition, customers whose service isinterrupted for 12 hours or longer will automatically receive fullcredit of their monthly customer charge. Subsequent 12-hour outageswill result in an additional monthly credit for every outageincident. Payments will automatically be disbursed within 30 days,and do not require an additional call from the customer.

Traders finally came to view the cash market Thursday much aspolice would view a vagrant: they’re suspicious of somethingwithout visible means of support. The result was predictable asprices fell anywhere from 2-3 cents at a few Gulf Coast points to15 cents or more in the Rockies/Pacific Northwest.