Fool

No, it wasn’t a joke for April Fool’s Day. The April aftermarket did get off to a very strong start Monday with large advances across the board. Cash quotes got support in several areas: Tuesday forecasts of low temperatures around freezing or less from the Rockies/Pacific Northwest/Western Canada through the Midwest to inland sections of the Northeast; rising heat levels in parts of the South; an 11.3-cent screen gain Friday; and the return of industrial load from its typical weekend decline.

In trading for April Fool’s Day flows, cash prices weren’t joking around. Except for some close-to-flat Rockies points, Wednesday’s quotes for the start of the April aftermarket continued to post substantial double-digit gains that were larger than Tuesday’s end-of-March upticks in many cases. Non-Rockies points rose anywhere from about 15 cents to 35 cents.

Don’t let the high wholesale power prices seen in U.S. merchant power markets last year fool you. Those high power prices “by no means imply that there is a shortage of generation capacity,” Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said in a report issued Thursday.

It’s not nice to fool the investing public — energy companies and their auditors are learning as Enron’s collapse continues to spark a tidal wave of investigations, recriminations and falling stock prices. Not only the companies are under attack but also the investment analysts who follow them and even the watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) itself is coming under fire for a “failure of leadership,” for abdicating its responsibility to set strict financial reporting standards.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgia natural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating bills risk losing their service, and the threat is so real that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumers delinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. The PSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expires the first day of next month.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgia natural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating bills risk losing their service, and the threat is so real that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumers delinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. The PSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expires the first day of next month.

Come April Fool’s Day it will be no joke. Nearly 200,000 Georgianatural gas customers who haven’t paid their winter heating billsrisk losing their service, and the threat is so real that theGeorgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is warning consumersdelinquent in their payments to contact their marketers now. ThePSC’s moratorium on nonpayment shutoffs, enacted Jan. 17, expiresthe first day of next month.

While it might think the April Fool’s date is appropriate forNew York to impose a new energy tax, the National Energy MarketersAssociation (NEM) still opposes the plan. “On April 1, 2000, NewYork will impose a new tax on natural gas and electricitytransportation. This new tax will severely limit furtherdevelopment of energy competition,” said NEM President CraigGoodman.

April swing prices showed even more strength Wednesday than theyhad in Tuesday’s trading for April Fool’s Day flow. Double-digitincreases were the order of the day at almost trading point.However, it appeared that numbers may have peaked for now sincesources reported that late deals were falling in most markets.That portends softening quotes today, they said.