Midcontinent

A few flat to barely lower points in the Midcontinent, Gulf Coast and Southwest mixed with moderate increases in the rest of the market Tuesday. Screen strength from the day before, along with continued storage buying, nuclear plant outages and power generation demand in the sultry South, were the major contributors to keeping this week’s cash bullishness from fading.

Except for minor softness in the Midcontinent/Midwest and Northeast areas, the East was dominated by flat pricing Thursday. The market tended to be a bit weaker at western points, which ranged from flat to down more than 15 cents (PG&E citygate).

Columbia Gas Transmission is conducting an open season to test the level of interest in moving Midcontinent gas collected by other pipelines into its Ohio territory to serve the growing power generation load.

“There’s a lot of gloom and doom all around,” commented a Midcontinent marketer. While the downhill slope for cash prices got a bit less steep Wednesday, no one was ready to argue with the marketer’s contention. Except for larger declines in the Rockies and at the PG&E citygate, most of the downticks were a dime or less, compared with overall drops in the teens the day before.

Citing forecasts of moderating Midcontinent temperatures,Williams said it will lift a systemwide OFO this morning. The OFOwas issued Dec. 16 (see Daily GPI, Dec. 19).

Public Service Co. of New Mexico is gaining a strong presence inthe Midwest/Midcontinent power market with the $4.4 billionpurchase, including debt assumption, of Western Resources’utilities. The proposed merger would create a new Albuquerque-basedholding company serving more than one million retail electriccustomers and 400,000 retail gas customers in New Mexico andKansas, with a generating capacity of more than 7,000 MW.

Public Service Co. of New Mexico is gaining a strong presence inthe Midwest/Midcontinent power market with the $4.4 billionpurchase, including debt assumption, of Western Resources’utilities. The proposed merger would create a new Albuquerque-basedholding company serving more than one million retail electriccustomers and 400,000 retail gas customers in New Mexico andKansas, with a generating capacity of more than 7,000 MW.

Weekend cash prices hit a plateau Friday in theMidcontinent/Midwest, Gulf Coast and Appalachia, but softened inthe Northeast and at most western points.

The Midwest utility landscape should expect radical changessoon, as two major mergers have cleared all regulatory approvalsand are closing in on completion.