Gave

FERC yesterday gave the go-ahead for Equitrans L.P. to acquireall but 26 miles of a 121-mile gas pipeline from Three RiversPipeline Co., a subsidiary of Equitable Resources Inc. Equitranswill purchase the facilities for their net book value of $4.2million.

FERC last week gave its seal of approval to the $6.4 billionmarriage of two major northeastern utilities — Energy East Corp.,parent of New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG), and CMP Group,parent of Central Maine Power — putting them clearly on the pathto becoming a major force in the Northeast energy market.

Even an abbreviated pre-holiday trading session at the New YorkMercantile Exchange gave traders no rest last Friday as the marketclawed its way higher from a “disappointing” open only to reverseright back down at the close. When all the dust had settled and theorders were tabulated, the March contract was off 3.4 cents for theday at $2.633.

California regulators gave San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. andits partner, San Francisco-based Bechtel Enterprises, the okay tobuild a $450 million, 880 MW natural gas-fired power plant, theDelta Energy Center, near the Dow Chemical facility in Pittsburg,CA, an industrial town in the East San Francisco Bay area.Construction is expected to get under way this summer, bringing tothree the number of merchant plants approved by Californiaauthorities, all involving Calpine.

After a strong opening at $2.28 failed to entice much in the wayof additional buying, natural gas futures gave back most of thegains achieved during Wednesday’s Access trading session anddrifted lower for much of the yesterday’s session. Although itsmomentum was decidedly to the downside Thursday, the Februarycontract did manage to post a higher high at $2.29 and escape witha modest, 0.8-cent advance to finish at $2.252. Estimated volumewas thin with only 45,585 contracts changing hands.

The Public Service Commission of West Virginia (PSC) gave itsblessing yesterday to the proposed purchase of UtiliCorp United’s WestVirginia Power division by Allegheny Power, the energy deliverycompany of Allegheny Energy Inc. The $75 million purchase wasannounced last September (see Daily GPI, Sept. 10).Before completion, the Security and ExchangeCommission still must give its approval. Allegheny expects this to bedone later this month. The purchase has already received the go-aheadfrom the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Federal TradeCommission.

As opposed to rejecting it outright, FERC last week gave ANRPipeline another bite at the apple to justify its proposal toestablish firm and interruptible hourly flow services to meet thegrowing gas demand of electric generators. In the meantime, itaccepted and suspended the pipeline’s tariff sheets for theproposed services.

For the third time in as many days the futures market gavetraders a head fake on the open, only to retrace during theremainder of the session. However, while the price action Mondayand Tuesday was down, then up, the opposite was true yesterday.Feeding off gains achieved during Tuesday’s Access trading session,the December contract notched its $2.905 high moments after theopen and proceeded to chop lower throughout the day. But thoselosses proved inadequate to overcome earlier gains and that enabledthe prompt contract to break its string of declines at 4 days,finishing instead up 3.6 cents at $2.873.

FERC gave CNG Transmission a slap on the hand last week andordered the pipeline to honor a shipper’s right of first refusal(ROFR) on a 13,350 Dth/d package of capacity that was sold toanother party last month. The Commission also intends to take acloser look at CNG’s capacity reservation and posting practices.