Nearing

Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA), who is leading the effort to reconcile the Senate and House energy bills, said Tuesday congressional negotiators expect to issue a conference report on omnibus energy legislation within two weeks. But the chief Senate negotiator, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), said while he hoped the conference report can be finished before Congress recesses next month, “I don’t want to be held to two weeks.”

El Paso said it is finally nearing completion of the All American oil pipeline conversion and its integration into the southern pipeline system. All American was bought by El Paso from Plains All American Pipeline LP in February 2000 (see Daily GPI, Feb. 4, 2000 ). The pipe segment extends 1,088 miles from McCamey, TX, to Emidio, CA, and will boost system flexibility by adding 230 MMcf/d of capacity this year on the southern system from the Permian Basin in West Texas to markets in Arizona and California.

With the Dynegy-Illinova merger nearing completion, Dynegyunloaded some major Midcontinent gathering and processing assetsyesterday in a $307.7 million sale to Oneok in an effort tostreamline its midstream operations. The move will leave Dynegy’smidstream assets focused on several core regions and will helpreduce its new equity offering by several million dollars.

As expected, there still is nearly complete disagreement amongOklahoma gatherers and producers over the fairness of current ratesand service treatment. Responses to a recent Oklahoma CorporationCommission (OCC) questionnaire reveal that nearly half of producerrespondents felt similarly situated producers on the same gatheringsystem received higher or lower prices than they received. Also,79% said this was unduly discriminatory.

The next round of restructuring is about to unfold in Canada’snatural-gas community as a white knight buyer prepares to stepforward for the country’s second-biggest supply aggregator,Pan-Alberta Gas Ltd. In fact, a team of rescuers has emerged.Senior Canadian industry sources say a producer consortium has comeup with a winning bid that will both keep the mammoth dealer inhome-grown hands and heal the worst remaining sore spot in thecommunity.

The gas industry’s long and winding road from pipelineelectronic bulletin boards (EBBs) to the Internet is heading backto the Gas Industry Standards Board Executive Committee for furtherdebate. However, progress has been made as GISB has so far narrowedthe number of proposals for Internet transition from seven down totwo, with the GISB Executive Committee strongly in favor of one,known as Model 2 or CAMEL, the Consortium Advancing MutualElectronic Links. The Executive Committee (EC) previously voted outModel 2 and Model 1 to be sent to the board. Model 2 received 19votes from EC members, while Model 1 received only two votes. TheGISB board of directors decided rather than choose one or send bothproposals to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) itwould send them back to the EC in the hope one or a combination ofthe two could be decided upon.