Minimum

Projecting linepack sinking below its minimum target levels over the next few days, Pacific Gas & Electric issued a systemwide Stage 3 low-inventory OFO for today. The OFO carries penalties of $5/Dth. The tolerance for negative daily imbalances is minus 2%.

Florida may be at the center of another controversy between the two Bush brothers, but this time it won’t involve a recount, but rather states’ rights versus federal authority – federal authority that through the Clinton administration had favored and supported states’ rights to ban offshore drilling. This time, the brothers could be on opposite sides.

Kinder Morgan says an open season for an expansion of TrailblazerPipeline has signed up 300 MMcf/d of fixed rate contracts for aminimum term of 10 years. The company is targeting the fourth quarterof 2002 for completion of the $54 million project. The proposedexpansion of Trailblazer’s 436-mile pipeline would start in Rockport,CO, at a multi-pipeline connection, and end in Gage County,NE. Trailblazer plans to install two new compressor stations, addadditional horsepower at compressor station 602 and perhaps constructsome 36-inch loop. The open season “generated a very strongresponse,” said Richard D. Kinder, chairman of Kinder Morgan EnergyPartners L.P. The company dropped an earlier plan to include anextension to its pipeline system in the open season when it appearedColorado Interstate Gas would have an expansion of its competingMedicine Bow lateral completed before a new Trailblazer line could beconstructed (see Daily GPI, Aug. 8).

Electric restructuring should be left up to the states and besubject to a minimum of federal government involvement, accordingto one survey just completed for the Electric Consumers’ Alliance(ECA). Meanwhile, another survey by RKS Research & Consultantsfinds commercial customers are increasingly demanding of betterservice and lower rates from their electricity suppliers in stateswhere competition already has begun.

Comments filed with the Maine Public Utility Commission showmarketers are opposed to all but the minimum registrationrequirements to participate in retail gas competition, while thestate’s new LDCs would like a significant amount of commissionoversight, particularly in the small customer market. The commentswere in response to the PUC’s Notice of Inquiry (NOI) into theRegulation of Gas Marketers, which was issued late last month.