Least

Florida Gas Transmission extended an Overage Alert Day notice forthe area east of Station 12 (see Daily GPI, July 30) through at least Friday’s gasday. The tolerance for daily negative imbalances remained at 3%.

Generation is out and distribution is in. At least that’s the thinking behind last week’s announcement that Energy East, the parent company of Upstate New York’s combination utility New York State Electric & Gas will buy CMP Group, parent of Maine’s largest electric utility, Central Maine Power, for $1.2 billion in cash and debt.

El Paso’s Caprock (NM) Station is down for emergency maintenancethat began Tuesday and will last at least through March 31. Afterthat point one of the two compressor units should be available, thepipeline said. San Juan Crossover capacity is being limited toabout 550 MMcf/d. El Paso encouraged shippers to use theTranswestern interconnect at Window Rock (AZ) to maximize flowsfrom San Juan Basin.

Current and projected economics will not support any of themajor pipeline expansions to the Northeast from the Midwest atleast until 2004, a new study by Energy ERA, a Calgary, AB-basedenergy consulting firm, concludes. The Portland Natural GasTransmission and Maritimes &amp Northeast pipelines as well as thepipeline expansions currently planned in the Gulf of Mexico will besufficient to meet growing gas demand in the Northeast over thenext few years.

It is said that first impressions are lasting ones, and bulltraders hope that adage applies also to futures contracts,following the market’s dramatic price rally as February’s debutedas the spot month yesterday. February opened Wednesday at Tuesday’shigh and moved 10.5 cents higher for the day to finish at $1.886.At 44,020, estimated volume was light considering the double digitprice move.

No news was good news on Monday – at least to the bears – as themarket continued to take back gains registered last week in frantichurricane-related trading. That prompted the October contract todrop 7.3 cents to settle at $2.187 yesterday as traders searchedfor any indication that Hurricane Georges (pronounced ZHORZH) wouldaffect natural gas interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

While efforts to deregulate the electric industry at both thestate and federal level drag on, at least one internationalobserver found U.S. gas deregulation worthy of praise. RobertPriddle, executive director of the International Energy Agency(IEA) in Paris, told reporters at the 17th Congress of the WorldEnergy Council that the United States leads the world in gascompetition.

Don’t worry. Be happy. Or at least don’t fret over electricpower reliability on New Year’s Eve 1999. The initial word is infrom the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), andthings don’t look as bad as some would have thought.

While efforts to deregulate the electric industry at both thestate and federal level drag on, at least one internationalobserver found U.S. gas deregulation worthy of praise. RobertPriddle, executive director of the International Energy Agency(IEA) in Paris, told reporters at the 17th Congress of the WorldEnergy Council that the United States leads the world in gascompetition. Priddle said he is heartened by the Federal EnergyRegulatory Commission’s (FERC) decision to review pipeline rateregulation. Priddle gave his talk to highlight findings of theIEA’s report card on U.S. energy policy. The findings stem from a1998 review and are published by the agency in a 152-page book.