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California regulators will hold public hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in the mountains and high desert region about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles as part of an investigation into the skyrocketing natural gas prices last winter charged by Las Vegas, NV-based Southwest Gas Corp.

Natural gas marketers might save a few pennies on each trade by doing their business online rather than over the phone, and they probably will handle more volume, but at some point in time it’s going to come back to haunt them, said Kevin Huntsman of Mastio & Company. Mastio just released its fifth customer satisfaction ranking of gas marketers, and the results are a little scary for many of the mega marketers, who boast about huge gas volumes but often have very few satisfied customers.

Natural gas marketers might save a few pennies on each trade by doing their business online rather than over the phone, and they probably will handle more volume, but at some point in time it’s going to come back to haunt them, said Kevin Huntsman of Mastio & Company. Mastio just released its fifth customer satisfaction ranking of gas marketers and the results are a little scary for many of the mega marketers, who boast about huge gas volumes, but often have very few satisfied customers.

With wholesale gas costs plummeting, Dominion East Ohio Gas said its customers will pay 25% less for natural gas in November, December and January than they paid during the same months a year earlier. Under a gas cost recovery (GCR) decrease filed on Wednesday with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Dominion East Ohio sales customers, starting Oct. 26, will pay $5.38/Mcf, down 12.8% from the current $6.17/Mcf and down 25% from the $7.18/Mcf they paid during the third quarter last year.

The market eked out small increases Tuesday that generally were a nickel or less. A screen uptick of nearly a dime provided some upward momentum, sources said, but cash traders more likely were anticipating what is expected to be the smallest AGA storage injection report in many weeks.

California-based independent merchant generators charged less than the average of purchases by California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR), according to a consultant’s analysis of state power purchases in the first quarter.

It now appears less likely that El Paso Natural Gas will be placing new bi-directional gas transportation capacity between Daggett, CA, and Ehrenberg, AZ, to facilitate increased in-state California transportation options. The pipeline intended to use portions of the converted All American pipeline to increase capacity between the two major western market locations, but a binding open season revealed insufficient market interest, El Paso said in a bulletin board notice.

It now appears less likely that El Paso Natural Gas will be placing new bi-directional gas transportation capacity between Daggett, CA, and Ehrenberg, AZ, to facilitate increased in-state California transportation options. The pipeline intended to use portions of the converted All American pipeline to increase capacity between the two major western market locations, but a binding open season revealed insufficient market interest, El Paso said in a bulletin board notice.

TradeSpark LP, the electronic and voice brokerage energy trading marketplace that debuted less than a year ago, said last week it had more than doubled its overall transaction volumes in just three months, trading more than $41.9 billion (notional value) in energy products in the second quarter, a 131% increase over the trades made in the first quarter of the year.