Fights

Even before the ink was dry on a massive 20-year contract for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Indonesia to Sempra Energy’s North Baja receiving terminal in Mexico, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), California’s utility watchdog group, filed with state regulators late Tuesday, asking them to reconsider a Sept. 2 decision allowing natural gas from LNG shipments to flow into California from Mexico at a Sempra utility operated receipt point south of San Diego.

Multiple environmental groups are suing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for authorizing Bill Barrett Corp. to conduct the Stone Cabin 3-D seismic gas exploration project on the West Tavaputs Plateau of eastern Utah this summer, possibly endangering cultural resources, such as rock art, cliff dwellings and other structures in nearby Nine Mile Canyon.

While the Chapter 11 Enron Corp. bankruptcy drama with tens of billions of dollar at stake ever-so slowly unfolds in a New York City bankruptcy court, in the Pacific Northwest Portland General Electric (PGE), the only utility owned by Enron, operates with solid financial footing, but an increasingly shaky political foundation that is testing the $2 billion utility’s mettle. PGE has reached out to state lawmakers in an attempt to hold off city officials who are trying to force a municipal takeover of the utility.

Producers and consumers alike stand to gain if Quebec and Ontario secure access to natural gas from the new production fields offshore of Nova Scotia that have to date been tapped almost entirely for exports to the northeastern United States, according to Gaz Metropolitain of Montreal and Enbridge Inc., owner of Toronto distributor Enbridge Consumers’ Gas. The two companies are proposing to build a new pipeline, the Cartier project, that would connect markets in Quebec City with a new lateral off of the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline in New Brunswick.

With calls for more details in its bankruptcy court filing of a company-wide reorganization, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. last week went on the offensive in trying to clarify what it called “myths” about its proposal. A major myth or criticism of the plan unveiled last month is that the parent company, PG&E Corp., is trying to hide major generation and transmission assets from state regulation, for which PG&E officials openly have expressed a lot of distaste this year.

Spurred by high gas prices over the last few months, GeorgiaSen. Regina Thomas (D-Savannah) is leading a charge to reverse the1997 deregulation legislation, and re-regulate natural gas in thestate.

In case anyone missed the lessons of new pipeline construction,hot regulatory fights and negotiating marathons, some newdescriptions for the state of Canadian natural gas transportationhave been coined at the National Energy Board.

Alleging the law that created the framework for a deregulatedelectric market in Nevada will be detrimental and unfair to theirstockholders and their customers, Nevada Power and Sierra PacificPower filed in federal court last week to have the law declaredunconstitutional.

The recent Oscar winners have nothing on San Francisco’svenerable Gran Dame of combination energy utilities, Pacific Gasand Electric Co., whose film career and notoriety seem destined towin increasing Hollywood scrutiny if not gold statuettes.