Interruptions

El Paso Natural Gas should not be permitted to give only partial reservation credits to shippers whose natural gas deliveries have been interrupted due to a scheduled maintenance event on the pipeline, a group of producers and marketers said.

Net quarterly losses were reported by ConocoPhillips, in its first financial report since completing its merger, and Amerada Hess last Thursday, putting downward pressure on major oil shares. Hess shares fell more than 11% to $58.54 by mid afternoon, while ConocoPhillips shares were down only about 2% to $47.20 because the charges were expected and its results from continuing operations were in line with Wall Street forecasts.

At 2 p.m. (PST) Monday, the Cal-ISO anticipated California wouldavoid rolling blackouts and have only some business interruptionsin northern California to get around the transmission bottleneckfor moving supplies south to north. The prognosis for Tuesday ispretty much as it was yesterday, said Cal-ISO’s COO KellanFluckiger, noting that they do not anticipate any unplannedoutages, which is always the wildcard in transmission gridmanagement in the midst of shortages of the magnitude thatCalifornia has faced for the past two months.