Helping

While pleading limited resources and the need to determine who pays for helping needy customers this winter in the face of rapidly escalating natural gas prices, a Sempra Energy senior utility executive told state regulators that the company’s Southern California Gas utility is considering tapping up to 5 Bcf of its cushion gas supplies in its extensive underground storage system as a means of tempering expected high winter gas utility bills for qualifying low-income customers.

While energy efficiency and renewables, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and the eventual construction of the Alaska pipeline can all play a role in helping to tackle the current gas supply/demand quandary facing the U.S., there is no single silver bullet available that can dramatically lower natural gas prices from their high levels today, a broad cross-section of energy and environmental officials agreed at a conference last Tuesday.

While energy efficiency and renewables, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and the eventual construction of the Alaska pipeline can all play a role in helping to tackle the current gas supply/demand quandary facing the U.S., there is no single silver bullet available that can dramatically lower natural gas prices from their high levels today, a broad cross-section of energy and environmental officials agreed at a conference on Tuesday.

Two former Merrill Lynch & Co. executives were sentenced in Houston on Thursday to federal prison for their roles in helping Enron Corp. to disguise a $7 million loan as a sale of three Nigerian energy barges.

Two former Merrill Lynch & Co. executives were sentenced in Houston on Thursday to federal prison for their roles in helping Enron Corp. to disguise a $7 million loan as a sale of three Nigerian energy barges.

Once hailed as a national model for helping industry voluntarily lower air emissions, the Southern California-based RECLAIM emission credits program crashed last Wednesday with the arrest on criminal fraud charges of one of its founders. A number of major western energy companies are listed as victims of what authorities call a basic $80 million Ponzi scheme. One of the victims, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp., told NGI on Thursday that it has settled with the emissions credit exchange for an undisclosed amount.

Magnum Hunter Resources Inc. and its partners are ramping up more production from their Gulf of Mexico (GOM) leases, which is helping the Irving, TX-based independent continue a string of offshore success that overall will yield an additional 20 MMcfe of new net daily production beginning in the fourth quarter.

Magnum Hunter Resources Inc. and its partners are ramping up more production from their Gulf of Mexico (GOM) leases, which is helping the Irving, TX-based independent continue a string of offshore success that overall will yield an additional 20 MMcfe of new net daily production beginning in the fourth quarter.

Aquila said it is targeting its energy risk management expertise at the ailing fertilizer industry, which has suffered tremendously over the past two years from volatile natural gas prices. Natural gas can account for up to 80% of a fertilizer product’s costs.