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With less than two weeks remaining until an election that could shift the balance of power in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and the state’s General Assembly remain deadlocked over a proposed natural gas severance tax.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has labeled “factually inaccurate” a front page report in the Washington Post that said speculators account for about 81% of the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).

Despite trading within a slim 14-cent range on Monday, the day’s market direction was already labeled as ‘lower’ following a 34.5-cent decline in Sunday’s overnight Access trade session. After opening at $6.840 Monday, July natural gas put in a low of $6.790 and a high of $6.930 before closing at $6.893, down 29.2 cents from Friday’s close.

Despite being labeled the main cause of California’s powermarket woes by the Governor, independent power producers say theyare willing to cooperate with any investigation by the FederalEnergy Regulatory Commission (FERC) into the wholesale powermarket.

Major trade groups for interstate natural gas pipelines andlocal distributors last week rallied to defend their membersagainst allegations that painted them and other energy deliverysystems as ticking “time bombs.”

New Mexico is the latest state to be labeled unfit forresidential energy marketing by Enron Corp., North America’slargest wholesale energy marketing firm. As in other states, suchas California, where Enron came to a similar conclusion, thecompany plans to continue participating in commercial andindustrial energy marketing. But the regulatory structure will makeit difficult, if not impossible, to compete profitably against theincumbent gas supplier, Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM),Enron said.