Friday

The 16 gas suppliers vying for Georgia customers had theirmoment of truth last Friday, as Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) determinedtheir market share and presented the results to the Georgia PublicService Commission (GPSC). As expected, Georgia Natural GasServices, an AGL affiliate, and Scana Energy Marketing gained themost customers, receiving over 60% of the market between them.

The national heat wave continued through Friday into theweekend, and electric utilities continued to use appeals forcustomer conservation and other demand-side management tools tokeep juice flowing as needed. But the heavy cooling load lost itsability to keep cash gas prices moving higher. Instead, most pointswere about a dime or more down in flows for the last day of July,and although quotes for Sunday and Monday tended to surpass thosefor Saturday, they still were below monthly indexes. Sources citedthe usual drop in weekend demand, a small screen decrease andforecasts that major market areas will have cooled off a bit bytoday as reasons for the softness.

TransCanada PipeLines, led by interim CEO Doug Baldwin, unveiled a new organizational structure Friday, aimed at “building greater value for shareholders from its pipeline, power generation, midstream and marketing infrastructure across Canada and the northern tier of the United States.”

TransCanada PipeLines, led by interim CEO Doug Baldwin, unveileda new organizational structure Friday, aimed at “building greatervalue for shareholders from its pipeline, power generation,midstream and marketing infrastructure across Canada and thenorthern tier of the United States.”

Coral Energy jumped head first into a new arena last Friday withits purchase of 2.8 Bcf of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fromMalaysia LNG Sdn. Bhd. The shipment will be delivered to CMS’ LakeCharles, LA, LNG import facility later this month. Terms of thetransaction were not released.

Coral Energy jumped head first into a new arena last Friday withits 2.8 Bcf purchase of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from MalaysiaLNG Sdn. Bhd. The shipment will be delivered to CMS’ Lake Charles,LA, LNG import facility later this month. Terms of the transactionwere not released.

EnergySouth Inc., a holding company for utility and storagecompanies in the Southeast, announced an expansion plan Friday forthe storage facilities of its subsidiary Bay Gas Storage Co. Theplan calls for an additional salt cavern to be developed, whichwill increase the total working gas capacity of the site from 2.4Bcf to 6 Bcf. An open season will be held from July 15 until Aug.31 to help assess the final size and shape of the expansion.

Dominion Energy Inc., a subsidiary of Dominion Resources, andRiver Gas Corp., a privately held company based in Northport, Al,said Friday they have jointly acquired lease rights to develop19,000 acres of coalbed methane territory in Alabama’s BlackWarrior Basin. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Thearea produces about 315 MMcf/d of coalbed methane. The jointventure acquired the assets from Pittsburgh and Midway Coal MiningCo. Dominion and River Gas expect to drill approximately 200 wellson the newly acquired acreage over the next three years. Together,the two companies currently own and operate more than 530 coalbedmethane wells in the region which produce 50 MMcf/d. River Gasbegan operation of these properties in 1987 and was one of theearliest operators in the Black Warrior Basin. The Black WarriorBasin is a 35,000-square-mile area in northwest Alabama.

Determined to fight to the end, NiSource took its $68/shareoffer ($5.6 billion) directly to Columbia Energy Group shareholderson Friday. It also filed litigation against Columbia and itsdirectors in the Delaware Chancery Court in an attempt to gain anopportunity to nominate a director to fill a vacant seat onColumbia’s board.