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Like many other industrial operators before it, Duke EnergyServices has found that operating along California’s famouscoastline can be a rocky proposition. Duke has been forced to pullback and reconfigure plans for its Morro Bay power plant along thecentral coast to accommodate local city concerns and is makingpromises to increase the city’s coffers by up to 30% through theplant remodel.

Like many other industrial operators before it, Duke EnergyServices has found that operating along California’s famouscoastline can be a rocky proposition. Duke has been forced to pullback and reconfigured plans for its Morro Bay power plant along thecentral coast to accommodate local city concerns and is makingpromises to increase the city’s coffers by up to 30% through theplant remodel.

Although it gets 13 parties to agree on solving the naggingproblem of imbalances, a new Pacific Gas and Electric settlementagreement on transmission and storage is just the first of a numberof changes anticipated under California’s ongoing gas industryrestructuring. Even for this step, state regulators still mustreact to the agreement and then market participants must assesswhether the provisions will result in the market efficiencies andcost-savings that shippers are anticipating.

For the third time in as many days the futures market gavetraders a head fake on the open, only to retrace during theremainder of the session. However, while the price action Mondayand Tuesday was down, then up, the opposite was true yesterday.Feeding off gains achieved during Tuesday’s Access trading session,the December contract notched its $2.905 high moments after theopen and proceeded to chop lower throughout the day. But thoselosses proved inadequate to overcome earlier gains and that enabledthe prompt contract to break its string of declines at 4 days,finishing instead up 3.6 cents at $2.873.

Wednesday’s suspicions that a weeklong run-up in cash prices,which hesitated only on Monday before starting to climb again, wascoming to an end proved well founded Thursday. A sharply droppingscreen, the continued lack of any significant storm threat toproduction and mild weather in the major market areas of theMidwest and Northeast combined to pull down eastern quotes byamounts on either side of a dime. Declines tended to be smaller inthe West, ranging from flat at a few Rockies points to as much as 8cents in the Northern California market.

An IBM Internet outage that affected many western and Canadiancustomers last week temporarily cut off access to Altrade’selectronic gas trading system Thursday afternoon costing thecompany and its customers at least 5 Bcf/d in trading volume duringa peak bidweek trading period.

An IBM Internet outage that affected many western and Canadiancustomers last week temporarily cut off access to Altrade’selectronic gas trading system Thursday afternoon costing thecompany and its customers at least 5 Bcf/d in trading volume duringa peak bidweek trading period.

As many had expected, prospects of severe heat averted much ofthe softness that normally accompanies a Fourth of July weekend,considered the year’s lowest demand period. But that was true onlyin eastern markets Friday. The bottom was dropping out for pricesin the West, particularly at the Southern California border.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge signed House Bill 1331 last Tuesday, deregulating many aspects of the states gas industry and paving the way for statewide customer choice to begin Nov. 1.