Goes

While hardly a nightly newscast goes by without noting the high cost of gasoline, the American Public Gas Association (APGA) is telling Congress it better do something to address high natural gas prices and warns that this December’s heating bills will reflect a doubling in the commodity cost from a year ago.

As goes Goldman Sachs Group Inc., so go three public-sector energy finance units’ natural gas projects in California and Tennessee, according to reports released Friday by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. In each case, S&P determined that the credit rating downgrades of financing insurance giant MBIA Insurance Corp. will not affect the gas supply projects.

When the second (western) leg of the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline goes into service in early 2008, it could put pipelines transporting natural gas from the Anadarko and Permian basins at a distinct disadvantage, said Denver-based Bentek Energy LLC in a report released last Wednesday.

When the second (western) leg of the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline goes into service in early 2008, it could put pipelines transporting natural gas from the Anadarko and Permian basins at a distinct disadvantage, said Denver-based Bentek Energy LLC in a report released Wednesday.

FERC’s December initiative proposing reforms of the agency’s market-power test to promote the construction of more natural gas storage sites goes beyond what Congress intended when it adopted additional storage incentives as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) told FERC Monday.

The energy policy act signed into law by President Bush in August “was a start,” but the nation needs energy legislation that goes far beyond that to address the run-up in prices and diminishing supplies, said the head of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Tuesday.

EnCana Corp.’s proposed Entrega Gas Pipeline is expected to be under construction by next June if all goes to plan, the company said this week. The pipe, to be constructed in two stages, would begin transporting natural gas from the Piceance Basin to the Cheyenne Hub by the end of next year (see Daily GPI, Oct. 21).

Following much bigger gas cost rate changes in the two previous years, Intermountain Gas, a natural gas distribution company in southern Idaho, has asked state regulators for a $22.1 million, or 10%, boost in rates, effective July 1. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission has asked for comments on the annual purchased gas adjustment (PGA) by June 11.

The basis blow-out in the Rockies will narrow in the short term as Kern River pipeline’s 900 MMcf/d expansion goes into service May 1, but the situation may change beyond that as Kern River fills up and Powder River Basin production increases, according to attendees at a recent conference held by the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States (IPAMS).