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Soothsayers are having a tough time coming up with a solid price forecast for this winter and next year because of the uncertainty over a potential war with Iraq and the mixed views about winter weather and gas supply.

The math still doesn’t add up at Hanover Compressor. The industry’s largest supplier of natural gas compression equipment revealed on Wednesday that for the third time this year it must restate prior financial results. After a review of prior business transactions, the company found that it incorrectly accounted for four transactions totaling revenues of $5.1 million and net income of $2 million.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a Stage 2 high-inventory OFO beyond Saturday.

In an effort to protect jurisdictional companies from having their cash funds siphoned off by parent firms facing bankruptcy or other financial troubles, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week proposed a rule that would set limits on the involvement of regulated public utilities and natural gas and oil pipelines in intra-corporate cash management programs, or money pools.

Having characterized the nation’s major energy firms as “failing miserably” to deliver promised increased cash flows from merchant energy businesses, most of the private-sector energy companies were blistered last Thursday by critical Standard & Poor’s analysts who conducted a conference call on the global utilities/energy merchant sector. The same firms with aggressive diversification plans five years ago, today for the most part, are “desperately trying to unwind” those businesses in response to a severe liquidity and capital crisis, triggered by the plunge in their stock prices, the analysts said.

In an effort to protect jurisdictional companies from having their cash funds siphoned off by parent firms facing bankruptcy or other financial troubles, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week proposed a rule that would set limits on the involvement of regulated public utilities and natural gas and oil pipelines in intra-corporate cash management programs, or money pools.

Having lifted Friday an Overage Alert Day notice for its market area that had been in place for 11 days, Florida Gas Transmission reinstituted the notice Saturday through at least Monday. The tolerance for negative daily imbalances is 15%.

The prospect for California fulfilling soon its goal of having 15-20% reserve margins in its electric generation capacity is clouded by the current financial uncertainty facing the energy industry, and may not be resolved until there is some further consolidation, according to representatives of merchant generators speaking at an industry conference in San Diego last week.

The Mid Atlantic Area Council (MAAC) expects to have sufficient generating capacity to serve the 2002 forecast summer peak demand, the regional reliability council recently said in its 2002 summer pre-seasonal assessment. MAAC is forecasting a summer net peak demand of 52,569 MW.