Mulling

Reliant Resources is mulling whether to mothball certain power plants in its U.S. fleet that are losing money, and a top official with the company said that announcements related to such a move are likely to occur in the near future.

A committee at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is mulling draft rules for a new set of financially settled electricity contracts that will be linked to PJM Interconnection’s locational marginal prices (LMP).

With a holiday weekend spent mulling sub-$4.00 natural gas under their belts, traders at the New York Mercantile Exchange wasted little time taking the June contract for one last ride lower Tuesday, as they demoted the prompt month through several levels of support. By virtue of its $3.738 final closing price, the June contract limped off the board with a 23.5-cent loss for the day, resting a whopping $1.203 lower than where it was when it began its tenure as prompt contract at Nymex a month ago.

Creating a stand-alone transmission company is easier said than done, and companies mulling such a move, should be prepared to face a slew of impediments and surprises along the way, according to several executives who appeared last week at the Energy Bar Association’s 55th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Although FERC staff shot down the Atlantic Alliance projecttwice as an alternative to both Independence and Millennium, it didnot deter project planners from moving forward with an open season.

Petal Gas Storage Co., a subsidiary of Crystal Oil Co., said theopen season for the proposed expansion of its high deliverabilitysalt cavern storage facility near Hattiesburg, MS, received servicerequests exceeding proposed capacity.

Petal Gas Storage Co., a subsidiary of Crystal Oil Co., said theopen season for the proposed expansion of its high deliverabilitysalt cavern storage facility near Hattiesburg, MS, received servicerequests exceeding proposed capacity. The open season had beenextended until Nov. 16. Petal is evaluating requests. The proposedexpansion includes leaching an additional salt cavern with astorage capacity of 5.2 Bcf of gas of which 3.2 Bcf would beworking gas. The new cavern, when combined with the existingcavern, will result in a facility with 5.8 Bcf of working gascapacity and a total withdrawal capacity of 600 MMcf/d. The openseason includes additional storage capacity and receipt/deliverypoints on the pipelines of Tennessee Gas Pipeline, Koch Gateway(low-pressure and high pressure systems), Transco, Sonat, Destin,and Florida Gas Transmission.

Oklahoma Natural Gas (ONG) is digesting the Oklahoma CorporationCommission’s (OCC) recently released upstream unbundling order andfinding at least a few things it does not like. “Generally, basedon what we’ve seen in the order thus far, there is concern on thepart of management that the order as it exists now could curtailthe ability of our affiliate ONEOK Gas Transportation Co. (OGT) tocompete effectively in the marketplace,” said spokesman Don Sherry.”Our management’s considering where we go from here. Presumably theorder was described as an interim order. Presumably, there may beadditional options available to us at the Oklahoma CorporationCommission. Presumably there are legal options as well, but none ofthat has been decided at this moment.”