Hour

In a two and a half hour hearing last Thursday the Illinois Commerce Commission brought together various representatives from government bodies as well as state utilities to discuss and pose questions regarding the current crisis involving high natural gas prices.

After opening on a strong note, natural gas futures tumbledlower in the first half-hour of trading Monday as traders tookprofits following Friday’s surprising 17.1-cent rally. However,once December had etched a $4.80 low for the day, the market wasleft to chop lazily sideways for the rest of the session. Theprompt month finished at $4.849, down 8.2 cents for the day.

After trading higher for most of the session, natural gasfutures tumbled lower in the last hour of trading as traders wereable to look past higher crude oil prices to instead focus onbearish storage and weather concerns. As is usually the case, theprompt month led the charge, falling 21.1 cents lower to close at$5.228.

No one is satisfied much by the California legislature’s11th-hour move late Wednesday to pass two new laws aimed atproviding relief for San Diego electric consumers and their utilitydistribution company, San Diego Gas & Electric. Nevertheless,the governor was expected to sign the measures.

When the clock strikes midnight tonight on the West Coast,California’s state legislature, which has been known to stop theCapitol clocks at 11:59 p.m. in similar occasions, will eitherprovide some ways out of the state’s electricity problems or watchits efforts turn back into the pumpkin that has represented thissummer’s high bills and short power supplies.

In what is becoming a bizarre case of concern to future merchantenergy project proponents, California regulators rescued a secondmerchant underground natural gas storage project from the trashheap last week by refusing to support a recommendation to deny theproposal and postponing the item for a future meeting. Analternative to the proposed administrative law judge (ALJ) decisionis likely to be developed by one of the members of the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission.

In what is becoming a bizarre case of concern to future merchantenergy project proponents, California regulators rescued a secondmerchant underground natural gas storage project from the trashheap Thursday by refusing to support a recommendation to deny theproposal and postponing the item for a future meeting. Analternative to the proposed administrative law judge (ALJ) decisionis likely to be developed by one of the members of the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission.

Some 11th-hour life has been pumped back into a proposal forallowing gas distribution competition in an industrialized part ofthe East San Francisco Bay. Two members of the five-memberCalifornia Public Utilities Commission have proposed an alternativeto the Western Gas Resources pipeline proposal, which would servecustomers inside Pacific Gas & Electric’s franchise territory.The CPUC is scheduled to take up competing approaches when it meetsNov. 4 in San Francisco.

After testing both the upside and the downside during the firsthour of trading, the futures market chose the middle road yesterdayas many traders waited on the sidelines ahead of the weekly storagereport. As a result, the November contract did not stray very farfrom center and finished the session up 1.5 cents at $2.601.