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In its first attempt to establish the “geographic scope” of regional transmission organizations (RTOs), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made clear last week that it plans to restrict the number of RTOs operating nationwide to four, with one dedicated to each region: the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and West.

In its first attempt to establish the “geographic scope” of regional transmission organizations (RTOs), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made clear yesterday that it plans to restrict the number of RTOs operating nationwide to four, with one dedicated to each region: the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and West.

A House GOP stopgap bill for California and FERC’s decision to limit price mitigation to emergency spot transactions in the state’s wholesale power market were broadsided by House and Senate Democrats last week, as well as by California energy officials.

To limit the exercise of significant market power, FERC stafflast week proposed that the California Independent Operator System(Cal-ISO) be permitted to mitigate prices on power transactions inits real-time markets during periods of reserve deficiencies, suchas Stage 3 emergencies.

Consolidated Edison Inc. called on FERC last Tuesday to enactmechanisms to limit the potential for price spikes in the New Yorkwholesale power market this summer.

Pacific Gas & Electric has called on FERC to rejectproposals that seek to give California utilities less time to paytheir ballooning generation cost obligations, and would absolvesellers of penalties for not supplying power if customers can’t paytheir bills.

“Unprecedented demand” for gas pushed Questar’s storage,transportation and distribution system to the limit in November,the company said last week. The Salt Lake City-based LDC was forcedto curtail service to some industrial customers during the month tomaintain deliveries to residential customers.

Although the sky appears to be the limit for the current gasmarket, it apparently hasn’t affected the long-term optimism of theEnergy Information Administration. EIA actually predicts priceswill begin to decline in 2002 and basically flatten out through2020. That will occur, EIA believes, despite a massive increase ingas consumption to nearly 35 Tcf by 2020.

El Paso declared an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty situationTuesday and said it will limit scheduled volumes at underperforminginterconnects to preserve system integrity. The pipeline alsopostponed pigging of Line 3201 in San Juan Basin (see Daily GPI,Dec. 19) by one more day to Dec. 28.