Future

As might be expected at a Calgary conference where producersdominated attendance and the first day’s panels, bullishness onfuture gas prices ran rampant despite last week’s price slump.Emphasizing the challenges and opportunities in reaching aprojected 30 Tcf/year market by the 2010s, speakers at Ziff EnergyGroup’s North American Gas Strategies conference agreed thatCanadian gas is well positioned to benefit both volume-wise andprice-wise in the coming years.

As might be expected at a Calgary conference where producersdominated attendance and the first day’s panels, bullishness onfuture gas prices ran rampant despite the current week’s slump.Emphasizing the challenges and opportunities in reaching aprojected 30 Tcf/year market by the 2010s, speakers at Ziff EnergyGroup’s “North American Gas Strategies” conference agreed Mondaythat Canadian gas is well positioned to benefit both volume-wiseand price-wise in the coming years.

A new California law restricting future natural gas unbundlingfits the “vision” of $5-billion utility holding company SanDiego-based Sempra Energy said, and it intends to “activelypromote” similar restrictions in other states in which it operates.

A new California law restricting future natural gas unbundlingfits the “vision” of the $5 billion utility holding company, SanDiego-based Sempra Energy said, and it intends to “activelypromote” similar restrictions in other states in which it operates.

California Gov. Gray Davis has signed a bill severely limitingthe future of retail gas unbundling in the state, keeping it on aseparate, more restricted track than electricity. AB 1421 replacesa one-year ban on further gas unbundling passed last year by thestate legislature. The measure was strongly backed byinvestor-owned utilities and utility unions.

California Gov. Gray Davis has signed a bill severely limitingthe future of retail gas unbundling in the state, keeping it on aseparate, more restricted track than electricity. AB 1421 replacesa one-year ban on further gas unbundling passed last year by thestate legislature. The measure was strongly backed byinvestor-owned utilities and utility unions (see Daily GPI, Sept.13).

Citing a need to meet future growth in the region, NW Natural, agas utility serving 477,000 customers in Washington, announcedplans to build a 52-mile, 24-inch pipeline from its existingfacilities near North Plains, WA, to the Williams Gas Pipeline inMolalla, WA. The company said yesterday it has filed a notice ofintent with the Energy Facility Siting Council (EFSC), a divisionof the Oregon Department of Energy. The total cost for the newpipeline, which NW Natural said would be complete by 2004, is $58million.

Parties in ongoing settlement negotiations have given up hope ofan all-encompassing, permanent solution to California’s futurenatural gas unbundling puzzle following an Oct. 6 meeting in LosAngeles. The best and most realistic hope now appears to be forattaining consensus on an interim solution by the regulator-imposedOct. 27 deadline, along with what parties describe as an”aggressive” timetable of up to two years for resolving andimplementing the issues of intra-state transmission and storageunbundling.

Although the E&P software and services business is abillion-dollar-a-year industry, more than half of the world’sgeoscientists are not using currently available computer technologyto evaluate prospects, according to Bob Stevenson, president ofE&P software provider Geographix, a Houston-based subsidiary ofLandmark Graphics.