Gate

The Canadian government has set up the starting gate for the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline race by activating a northern regulatory agency and opening a door to providing indirect financial assistance for the project.

Panhandle Eastern said an outage at the Louisburg (KS) Station to replace a gate valve will begin at 8 a.m. CDT today and last about one day and eight hours. The KN Pony Express point will be shut in during the work, affecting 75,000 Dth/d.

Two basis swap contracts based on NGI’s bidweek indexes atChicago and the Southern California border were among a number ofenergy products approved last week for listing on enymex, the NewYork Mercantile Exchange’s Internet-based trading system. Nymexexpects to launch the new system during the second quarter of 2001.

Nominations exceeded capacity at NOVA’s Eastern Gate Tuesday,causing a restriction of about 270 MMcf/d, or 46% of IT capability.

Bears came out of the gate in force Thursday in reaction to ahigher than expected 91 Bcf storage injection, a plummeting futuresscreen and cooling temperatures in the Northeast. But for all thesound and fury most points stayed flat to Wednesday’s results orregistered minuscule drops of a penny or so.

Although gas supply and power contracts probably won’t be signeduntil next year, California’s first major merchant generation plantis expected to get its final state regulatory approval next weekand break ground this summer north of Sacramento in Sutter Countynear the agricultural town of Yuba City. A set of environmentalconcessions by the project sponsor, San Jose, CA-based CalpineCorp., pushed it into the lead spot among seven other projectsundergoing the state regulatory approval process. Projectfinancing, gas supply contracts and power supply deals will all bewrapped up in the second and third quarters of 2000, according toCalpine’s Sutter project manager, Curt Hildebrand.