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Duke Energy Trading and Marketing and Dynegy Marketing and Tradewere the winning bidders in the first auction of Gulf Coast gastransportation services in the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS)Gulf of Mexico royalty in-kind pilot program. The two companieswill be transporting a total of 198 MMcf/d of royalty gasproduction to the General Services Administration (GSA) at marketpoints onshore Louisiana from December through March 2000.

Duke Energy Trading and Marketing and Dynegy Marketing and Tradewere the winning bidders in the first auction of Gulf Coast gastransportation services in the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS)Gulf royalty in-kind pilot program. The two companies will betransporting a total of 198 MMcf/d of royalty gas production to theGeneral Services Administration (GSA) onshore Louisiana fromDecember through March 2000.

In his first visit ever to FERC, Energy Secretary BillRichardson last week drove home the need for a federal electricityrestructuring bill and the importance for the Commission to have apivotal part in that effort.

In his first visit ever to FERC, Energy Secretary BillRichardson yesterday drove home the need for a federal electricityrestructuring bill and the importance for the Commission to have acritical role in that effort.

As the first of a two-part move toward an all-party settlementregarding California’s future natural gas restructuring, PacificGas and Electric is expected this week to file with stateregulators a proposed settlement for the tighter management ofsystem imbalances – both their frequency and cost. A proposal,including provisions for using individual operational flow orders(OFOs), will be sent to the California Public Utilities Commissionfor approval Oct. 20, according to sources close to thenegotiations last week.

Williams’ Buccaneer Gas Pipeline was the first to file anunderwater Florida-bound project with the FERC on Sept. 30 (see DailyGPI, Oct. 1), but Coastal Corp.’scompeting Gulfstream Natural Gas System moved to the lead today,filing its project three days after Buccaneer’s filing was rejected ontechnical grounds. The FERC told Buccaneer to come back with acomplete filing.

In a rumor that first broke late last week, Consolidated Edison(ConEd), a combination utility serving over three million electricand one million gas customers in New York, is reported to be inmerger talks with West Springfield, MA-based Northeast Utilities(NU), the largest electric utility in New England. Neither companywould comment on the subject. The reported stock and cash dealwould value NU at $2.8 billion.

After testing both the upside and the downside during the firsthour of trading, the futures market chose the middle road yesterdayas many traders waited on the sidelines ahead of the weekly storagereport. As a result, the November contract did not stray very farfrom center and finished the session up 1.5 cents at $2.601.

A proposed expansion/replacement of Paiute Pipeline’s CarsonLateral last week became the first project to be challenged underthe FERC’s new policy statement, which requires new pipelineconstruction to be priced incrementally.