General

Despite flatness at a few mostly western points, the overallmarket pushed higher by around a nickel or so Tuesday. Electricgeneration stresses had faded in the Northeast, but early screensupport and rising air conditioning load in the South-and to amilder extent in the Midwest-combined for the cash gains.

Working into the early hours of Thursday morning, the Pennsylvania General Assembly finally pushed through a statewide gas restructuring bill in the last session before breaking for summer vacation. Under the Natural Gas Choice and Competition Act, gas will become a price-deregulated commodity for residential and small commercial customers in Pennsylvania on Nov. 1. Gov. Tom Ridge, who has already voiced his support for the bill, has 10 days to sign it into law.

Working into the early hours of Thursday morning, thePennsylvania General Assembly finally pushed through a statewidegas restructuring bill in the last session before the assemblybroke for summer vacation. Under the Natural Gas Choice andCompetition Act, gas will become a price-deregulated commodity forresidential and small commercial customers on Nov. 1. Governor TomRidge, who has already voiced his support for the bill, has 10 daysto sign it into law.

Beverly Marshall, formerly a Washington representative forSouthern California Edison, has been named vice president andgeneral manager of federal government affairs for Duke Energy.

Dominion Resources announced Friday it has signed an agreementwith General Electric Co. for an option to purchase 10 naturalgas-fired electric generation turbines for an undisclosed sum.

Calgary-based TransCanada Gas Processing Ltd., the generalpartner of TransCanada Gas Processing LP, said processing volumesat the Cutbank Joule-Thompson (J-T) plant have increasedsignificantly since operations began last month due to tie-in ofChevron Canada Resources production four months ahead of schedule.

A new General Accounting Office (GA0) report concluding that theelectric utilities are lagging behind on Y2K readiness came underfire in industry circles for being based on data that was sixmonths old. The GAO report, which was released last Friday,followed a Senate study of the issue that industry critics contendalso was founded on out-dated, faulty information.

The Maryland General Assembly Friday passed legislation to openthe state’s retail electric industry to competition. Gov. ParrisGlendening is expected to sign the bill into law next week. Thelegislation will phase in residential customer choice over athree-year period beginning with one-third of residential customersJuly 1, 2000. Residential customers choosing to keep their utilityas supplier would get rate cuts of 3% to 7.5% to be determined bythe Public Service Commission. The rate cuts would last four yearsand then rates would be deregulated.

Terry Keane, former vice president of Smith International,Houston, has been named vice president and general manager of theGas Research Institute’s Exploration and Production Business Unitin Chicago.