Hangs

As the broad energy bill (HR 6) hangs in the balance in the Senate, representatives of the struggling steel, agriculture and paper industries told a House subcommittee last week that they need fast relief from high natural gas prices. Assurances of lower prices 10 or more years down the road, when liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and Alaska gas are projected to play a bigger role in the U.S. supply mix, don’t help them now, they said.

As the broad energy bill (HR 6) hangs in the balance in the Senate, representatives of the struggling steel, agriculture and paper industries told a House subcommittee that they need fast relief from high natural gas prices. Assurances of lower prices 10 or more years down the road, when liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and Alaska gas are projected to play a bigger role in the U.S. supply mix, won’t do, they said.

Enron’s bankruptcy reorganization plan and the continuing revelations about its trading manipulations in the California market, left the proposed sale of its Portland General Electric utility to neighboring Portland-based Northwest Natural Gas Corp. hanging on an increasingly thin thread of hope last week. Portland General landed on Standard & Poor’s “CreditWatch Negative” listing, with a notation that if the sale unravels the electric utility’s ratings could fall to the “speculative” level.

A controversial amendment that seeks to regulate the trading of over-the-counter (OTC) energy derivatives remained in Senate limbo late last week after opposing sides failed to reach an compromise to allow the proposal to come up for a vote.

El Paso Corp.’s Elba Island LNG terminal, which has been dormant since 1980, officially opened its doors last week when it received the diverted tanker from Distrigas of Massachusetts LLC that had been barred from entering Boston Harbor due to security concerns.

El Paso Corp.’s Elba Island LNG terminal, which has been dormant since 1980, officially opened its doors yesterday when it received the diverted tanker from Distrigas of Massachusetts LLC that had been barred from entering Boston Harbor last week.

Despite the nine natural gas suppliers who bellied up to PacificGas & Electric’s bar last week after the federal emergencyorder expired, the utility still faces “the possibility of a severegas supply crisis.”

Wednesday dawned with a combination of relief and continuingconcern over gas supplies for the northern half of California inthe wake of the federal emergency order expiring at midnightTuesday. The expiration left Pacific Gas and Electric Co. stillscrambling to get its main suppliers to extend current contractsinto the coming weeks and months. State regulators are expected torule today on a PG&E request for emergency supplies fromSouthern California Gas Co., something the latter utility isstrongly opposing.

The East-West divergence in price tendencies was repeated againTuesday in a slightly different way. While Monday’s overall uptickshad been most pronounced in the West, eastern markets retreated byabout a nickel Tuesday as Western markets managed mostly flat tobarely-off-a-penny performances.