Finding

Finding Friday’s customer-specific OFO (see Daily GPI, Sept. 22) insufficient to keep itsprojected linepack from rising well above target levels over theweekend, Pacific Gas & Electric expanded it to a systemwide Stage3 high-linepack OFO for Saturday. The order carried $5/Dth penaltiesfor positive daily imbalances exceeding a 2% tolerance.

Finding superlatives to match the second-quarter earnings reports for energy companies across the United States in the past few weeks has been difficult at best. With earnings doubled, tripled, and for some even quadrupled, there was little bad news to report. High natural gas and crude prices, coupled with high demand, have guaranteed magnificent returns across the board.

Finding superlatives to match the second-quarter earningsreports for energy companies across the United States in the pastfew weeks has been difficult at best. With earnings doubled,tripled, and for some even quadrupled, there was little bad news toreport. High natural gas and crude prices, coupled with highdemand, have guaranteed magnificent returns across the board.

While some might say it’s long overdue, FERC yesterdayauthorized its staff to undertake a “fact-finding investigation”into conditions in the bulk power markets to determine the reasonsfor the wild price volatility and reliability problems that havegripped the market during the past couple of summers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the mostsignificant aspects of FERC Orders 888 and 889 in a ruling releasedon Friday. “Finding few defects in the orders, we uphold them innearly all respects,” the court stated in its decision(Transmission Access Policy Study Group, et al. v. FERC No.97-1715).

The first-ever broad-based study analyzing finding anddevelopment (F&D) costs by strategy area and cost componentsfor companies operating in the Shelf and Slope areas of the Gulf ofMexico shows that technology plays a key role in determiningcompetitive advantage. Ziff Energy Group, which released the studythis week at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston,analyzed activity on the Shelf and Slope to 1,500-feet water depth.

FERC last week dealt another blow to El Paso Natural Gas,finding that the pipeline had violated the Gas Industry StandardsBoard’s (GISB) standards pertaining to confirmation deadlines andconfirmation quantities.

Incremental prices for the last day of March, finding little tono support from any direction, did the natural thing: they fell byanywhere from about a nickel to more than a dime. April bidweeknumbers also slid a bit further.

FERC yesterday dealt another blow to El Paso Natural Gas,finding that the pipeline had violated the Gas Industry StandardsBoard’s (GISB) standards pertaining to confirmation deadlines andconfirmation quantities.