Incumbent

Although she gained some ground Tuesday during the counting of absentee and provisional ballots, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — an advocate of the oil and natural gas industry — conceded Alaska’s Republican primary to Tea Party-backed candidate Joe Miller.

Incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) gained some ground Tuesday on Tea Party candidate Joe Miller as the state began counting thousands of absentee ballots and disputed ballots in the state’s Republican primary.

Absentee ballots are yet to be counted, but initial election results show a surprise upset of incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski by Joe Miller, a little-known conservative Tea Party candidate in the Alaska Republican primary Aug. 24. As ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski has been a leader on the Republican side of the Senate on energy issues.

Irate mineral rights owners are making an Alberta election issue out of a rich natural gas formation by calling on the incumbent Conservative government to take sides with them in a dispute with industry.

Irate mineral rights owners are making an Alberta election issue out of a rich natural gas formation by calling on the incumbent Conservative government to take sides with them in a dispute with industry.

Scrambling to make up ground in opinion polls showing his gubernatorial campaign trailing the incumbent, California State Treasurer Phil Angelides Friday stood on a bluff in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean and declared he is opposed to BHP Billiton’s proposal to build an offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal about a dozen miles out to sea.

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC Friday upheld FERC orders eliminating the contract term cap for incumbent pipeline shippers who exercise their rights of first refusal (ROFR) to retain transportation capacity under contracts that are due to expire. The court also upheld an agency decision to allow shippers to use forward-haul and backhaul transactions to transport gas to a single delivery point in an amount exceeding their contact demand.

With the annual shareholder meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. CST Tuesday in Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center, El Paso Corp.’s incumbent board of directors will know then whether they will remain in control of the massive energy services corporation or whether they will be replaced by a tenacious group of energy professionals.

A national retail customer survey by North Salem, NY-based RKS Research and Consulting found that residential consumers like the familiarity of their local utility and don’t mind paying more for new products and services as long as the charges aren’t tacked on to their monthly bills. The study, however, also concluded that utilities will need to overhaul some longstanding practices in order to compete successfully with established retail suppliers, contractors, and competing energy providers.