Keeps

Despite strong urging from natural gas distributors, the regional Northwest Power Planning Council in Portland, OR, is expected later this month to draw short of stepping up the region’s push for faster natural gas conversions by end-users, letting market forces decide. Meanwhile, the council is keeping a close eye on the extremely low hydro situation, whose impact has been eased by a combination of emergency generation units and shutdown of major industrial plants.

Despite strong urging from natural gas distributors, the regional Northwest Power Planning Council in Portland, OR, is expected later this month to draw short of stepping up the region’s push for faster natural conversions by end-users, letting market forces decide. Meanwhile, the council is keeping a close eye on the extremely low hydro situation, whose impact has been eased by a combination of emergency generation units and shutdown of major industrial plants.

The Republican majority of the House Resources Committee yesterday fought off two attempts by Democratic members to remove from energy legislation a controversial provision that would open the coastal region of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and natural gas drilling.

A House Resources Committee bill was introduced Tuesday that would offer producers additional incentives to squeeze out every last drop of oil and natural gas from the maturer regions of the Gulf of Mexico. It would keep intact the moratoria that currently exists for the other Outer Continental Shelf regions in the United States, but it would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling.

Prices emerged from the weekend flat to slightly higher or lowerMonday at nearly all points outside the declining California andRockies/San Juan markets. There probably would have been moreeastern softness, sources said, if weather in the Northeast andMidwest hadn’t exhibited more of a tendency to retreat back intowinter, rather than press forward into spring. Even the South wasseeing more chill than normal for this time of year.

Despite prospects for a potentially severe winter storm in theNortheast and moderate screen firmness, the cash market generallyranged from flat to down about 20 cents Friday, as falling weekenddemand made an impact. Northern California numbers retreated fromThursday’s spike, but the Southern California border tacked on morethan $2.50 to its market-leading average.

A mild rally continued Tuesday for end-of-February swing pricesin most markets outside California, where all three major pricingpoints were united for a change in substantial declines.Non-California points generally ranged from flat to more than adime higher, but most of the upticks were less than a dime.

While the clocks tick and the calendar pages keep turning,California keeps churning out court and regulatory cases fasterthan legislative solutions for its nagging energy woes.

The amount of new gas-fired power generation planned for the next two years reveals the rather alarming possibility that an additional 10 Bcf/d of gas demand could be added to the gas market before the end of 2002 from power demand alone, according to a report by Raymond James & Associates.