Market

Florida Gas Transmission lifted Tuesday an Overage Alert Daynotice that had been issued Monday for its market area (see DailyGPI, July 25), but said it will continue to monitor hourly anddaily takes and use appropriate operational controls to ensuresystem integrity.

Florida Gas Transmission continued an Overage Alert Day notice forits market area (see Daily GPI, July 13)Thursday but tightened the tolerance for negative daily imbalancesfrom 10% to 6%.

State regulators, LDCs, utilities and industry analysts arespringing into action to prepare residential customers for theharsh reality of much higher natural gas bills next winter,especially if power generation demand for gas continues unabatedand the winter heating season is unusually cold.

Citing significant demand in its market area, Florida GasTransmission issued an Overage Alert Day notice Friday that was toremain in effect until further notice east of Station 12 innorth-central Florida. The notice had a 4% tolerance for negativedaily imbalances.

The meltdown occurred as expected Thursday in the cash market.Few points escaped with declines of less than 20 cents, with thegreatest losses of around 40 cents at the linepack-saturatedNorthern California points of Malin and the PG&E citygate,where the utility declared a systemwide OFO for today (seeTransportation Notes).

Except for flat to softer numbers for California, intra-Albertaand some Rockies points, prices advanced between about a nickel and15 cents Tuesday. But traders who attributed Tuesday’s increases toMonday’s screen rise, were assessing a similar carryover fromdeclining futures Tuesday, which they credited with bringing onlate Tuesday retreats in many markets and predictions of moderatesoftness in today’s cash trading.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and Landmark Graphics Corp. agreedyesterday to jointly market and implement capital allocation andperformance management software applications for the oil and gasindustry. The agreement will provide the oil and gas industry withautomated tracking services, and the ability to better manageshareholder value and related information. “With the globallandscape of oil and gas companies in continuous change, we areextremely excited about the opportunities our work with LandmarkGraphics will bring to the industry,” said Michael Olszewski,consulting managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers NorthAmerican Petroleum Practice. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Energy& Mining Group serves more than 3,000 oil and gas companiesworldwide with problem solving and risk management. Landmark, awholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton Co., supplies integratedE&P technical and economic software and services for the oiland gas industry. Both are headquartered in Houston.

Judging from the huge dip in futures prices last Wednesday, themarket apparently didn’t get wind of a new, more bullish hurricaneseason forecast by renowned hurricane prognosticator Dr. WilliamGray and his team of soothsayers at Colorado State University.

Tuscarora Gas Transmission is seeking FERC authority to build a16.4-mile, 10,000 Dth/d lateral to meet the growing winter gasneeds of LDC affiliate Sierra Pacific Power Co. (SPPC) in thenorthern and western sections of Nevada.