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The first bidweek under Pacific Gas & Electric’s Gas Accordtransportation framework was a rough ride for many doing businessin the drastically changed northern California market. WhilePG&E went ahead with its massive computer system upgrade onschedule, few shippers were prepared to handle it.

March 17 is the deadline for bidders to present proposals tosupply and manage the natural gas, electric and water and sewerutility services for the National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak)at facilities across the country. The current bill for the services- which Amtrak would like to see reduced – is $30 million a year.

Energy guru and Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin toldFederal Energy Regulatory Commission staffers there will still be aplace for the agency in the next millennium despite the fact themarketplace is taking “The Commanding Heights” away fromgovernments.

Basis relationships have tightened by a remarkable degree inMarch, and Thursday’s continuing price strength in the West coupledwith drops of a nickel or so at points in the Gulf Coast,Midcontinent and Appalachia/Northeast brought the regions evencloser.

The April Nymex contract finally broke out of its recent tradingrange by falling a relatively large 8.7 cents to $2.141 onThursday. “Today was massive long liquidation by funds, coupledwith weaker cash prices,” a broker told NGI. “The market droppedbelow the magic 40-day moving average (at $2.205), and fell belowtrendline support at $2.19. Both those things triggered a series ofstop loss orders, which helped propel April even lower. April lookspretty negative on the charts. There was a lot of technical damagetoday. The market will most likely want to continue to test thedown side,” he said.

Although the most recent estimates from the Energy InformationAdministration show gas consumption so far this winter to be up1.7%, or 1.28 Bcf/d, from the same period last winter (Novemberthrough February), the warming effects of El Nino continue to put adamper on gas and energy use. Since the beginning of November,population weighted heating degree days as calculated by theNational Weather Service have averaged about 10% fewer than normaland 7.6% fewer than last winter. But since Jan. 1, there have been20% fewer heating degree days than normal (1,438 HDD compared to1,801 HDDs) and 15% fewer than last year (1,683 HDDs). Heatingdegree days are calculated by measuring the differences between themean daily temperatures in 200 cities across the U.S. and 65degrees. Every region of the country has had fewer HHDs than normalduring the months of January and February.

Although often seen as effective vehicles for achievingcompetition, pilot programs also are being used as a “delayingtactic” by some natural gas and electric utilities that aren’tbullish on the idea of bringing customer choice to their markets, amarketing official charged last week.

As a result of KN Energy’s acquisition of MidCon Corp. in lateJanuary, MC2 said it plans to turn its focus to retail natural gasand electric markets in western states in which its new parent doesa lot of trading.

State regulators shouldn’t force utilities to relinquish theirmerchant role in a competitive natural gas market, industry expertsagreed last week. Why bother? Given enough time, the market will dothat job for regulators, an energy supplier remarked.