Fate

Conference Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) on Friday postponed a conference vote on the broad energy bill that was scheduled for Tuesday and shelved plans to release a conference report, citing the failure of the House-Senate tax writers to settle their differences on a number of controversial tax items.

If the controversial price supports for Alaska gas production fail to make it into the broad energy bill being negotiated, “there will be nothing of significance in the bill that addresses the supply-demand needs” of natural gas customers in the United States, said an official for Alaska producer ConocoPhillips Thursday.

Ending months of doubt over the fate of a FERC designee, the White House has re-nominated Joseph T. Kelliher to one of two vacant seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Kelliher, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy (DOE), would succeed former Commissioner Linda K. Breathitt, whose term expired in December.

Ending months of doubt over the fate of a FERC designee, the White House last week re-nominated Joseph T. Kelliher to one of two vacant seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Kelliher, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy (DOE), would succeed former Commissioner Linda K. Breathitt, whose term expired in December.

Locational marginal pricing (LMP), a key component of FERC’s massive standard market design (SMD) proposal for U.S. wholesale power markets, will fail in the absence of so-called participant funding for new transmission construction and upgrades, a top official with Southern Co. said last Wednesday.

There’s no telling what the ultimate fate of PG&E Corp.’s bold move to move major assets out of its state-regulated utility operations as part of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan will be, but major merchant generator/marketers are sitting comfortably with assurances they will recover up to almost $1 billion in unpaid wholesale power bills, regardless of what the bankruptcy judge decides.

This week is crunch time for the California legislature and the fate of Southern California Edison Co. as it sits on the edge of being dragged into bankruptcy. Facing a summer recess beginning this Friday, state lawmakers were exploring alternatives to the April 9 deal the governor and Edison struck that involves the sale of the utility’s transmission assets to the state.

This week is crunch time for the California legislature and the fate of Southern California Edison Co. as it sits on the edge of being dragged into bankruptcy. Facing a summer recess starting this Friday, state lawmakers were exploring alternatives to the April 9 deal between the governor and Edison that calls for the sale of the utility’s transmission assets to the state.

In an ironic twist of fate, California lawmakers have succeeded in deterring construction of new generation at the same time they are trying to solve their state’s energy shortage. Mirant Corp. said on Friday it will delay construction on its approved 530 MW expansion at its Contra Costa power plant because of market uncertainty. The plant received its permit May 29.