Heavily

Saying forecasts indicate that cold weather will continue in the state of Florida and its capacity is being heavily utilized, Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day notice Monday with 15% tolerance for negative daily imbalances.

The October aftermarket opened on a heavily bullish note at eastern, southwestern and California points Monday with cash prices shooting up between about a quarter and a little more than 50 cents. However, Rockies numbers were flat to down as much as 20 cents, one source said. Lili officially became a hurricane — the fourth of the 2002 Atlantic season — Monday morning and was staying on a track similar to the one that Isidore followed before it caused widespread production outages in the Gulf of Mexico last week.

Questar Corp. plans to continue investing heavily in exploration and production (E&P) and reserve acquisitions in the Rocky Mountains and Midcontinent regions over the next few years to maintain its “good returns” on capital in its nonregulated businesses, and to lift the returns on its lagging regulated businesses. It also intends to sell off non-core energy assets to lighten its debt load, said the company’s new CEO Keith O. Rattie.

A publicly held independent, San Diego, CA-based Royale Energy, announced Tuesday it successfully drilled a new well in the historically heavily drilled dry gas Rio Vista field in the Sacramento Basin in eastern Contra Costa County. No flow rates were given, but two earlier wells in the vicinity drilled last year are producing 2 MMcf/d collectively, said Don Hosmer, a Royale Energy executive in San Diego.

Hotter than normal temperatures should prevail through the heavily populated Northeast for the rest of the summer and into the fall, according to an updated weather forecast released last week by Weather Services International (WSI). The latest forecast backs up one issued in April by Salomon Smith Barney meteorologist Jon Davis, who predicts a chance of heat waves in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

Hotter than normal temperatures should prevail through the heavily populated Northeast for the rest of the summer and into the fall, according to an updated weather forecast released Wednesday by Weather Services International (WSI). The latest forecast backs up one issued in April by Salomon Smith Barney’s meteorologist which predicts a chance of heat waves in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

A popular Mark Twain quotation goes, “Everybody talks about theweather but nobody does anything about it.” Well, utilities andend-users don’t want anybody doing anything at all about theweather because it was the primary reason (again, for the umpteenthtime) for prices to return to double-digit descents Friday in mostcases.

Rebounding from Thursday’s heavily predicted, albeit modestsell-off, natural gas futures turned higher Friday as tradersjumped at the opportunity to increase their length while the marketwas trading off fresh highs. After opening lower and quicklymatching Thursday’s $2.75 low, the April contract rumbled 4.2 centshigher to close at $2.825, just below its $2.83 high for the dayand only pennies less than the $2.865 life-of-contract high put inThursday. Estimated volume was solid, with 53,424 contractschanging hands.

Pacific Gas and Electric is attempting to block Denver-basedWestern Gas Resources’ plans for moving into a heavilyindustrialized part of the utility’s East San Francisco Bay serviceterritory by converting a proprietary gas pipeline to astate-regulated, open-access supply line serving proposed newmerchant power plants in Pittsburg, CA, along with surroundinglarge industrial loads.