Need

“We’re tough up this way; we don’t need heat,” a Midwest source jested as a way of trying to explain Thursday’s falling prices despite subfreezing temperatures across most of the region that would extend into the weekend. Quotes fell across the board, with losses ranging from a little more than a dime at some western points to about a half a dollar for New York City deliveries.

Recent six- to 10-day temperature outlooks by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) have been off by a mile, and CPC Senior Forecaster Ed O’Lenic admits the atmospheric situation currently is the “kind that forecasters dread.”

Recent six- to 10-day temperature outlooks by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) have been off by a mile, and CPC Senior Forecaster Ed O’Lenic admits the atmospheric situation currently is the “kind that forecasters dread.”

With an added 100,000 MW of wind power in the next decade could supplant the need for higher-priced natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, wind advocates contend.

Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) Chairman Victor Carrillo has called on the state’s governor to help create a Texas Energy Plan, which he said will strengthen not only the economy but its energy industry.

While Calpine Corp., Williams, Dynegy and Reliant Resources all have made “very good progress” over the past six months in solving near-term liquidity problems, an analyst with Fitch Ratings on Wednesday said that some of the basic credit problems facing the merchant sector have yet to be solved, including exorbitant debt leverage and anemic wholesale market conditions.

Standard and Poor’s Rating Service (S&P) on Thursday warned in a report titled “Risky Business: Selling Retail Electricity in the U.S.” that many retail marketers are in the same boat as wholesalers with significant market risk because of volatile prices and switching customers, operational challenges such as mass billing and collections, and weak credit.

Citing the need to receive compensation for the upgrades it has made on its natural gas delivery system, North Carolina Natural Gas (NCNG) said Tuesday that it has filed with the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) seeking a general increase in service rates.

Northwest warned shippers that based on available data, it may need to invoke a Declared Overrun Entitlement Period as early as Tuesday. The entitlement would apply to delivery points north of Kemmerer (WY) Compressor Station, which is considered a longtime bottleneck on the pipeline’s system. Northwest explained Thursday that over the past few months it has allowed shippers to draft the system on a limited basis to work off their Receiving Party imbalances. But during the past week the drafting has been excessive, it continued, and as documented in daily bulletin board reports, Northwest’s balance at the Jackson Prairie storage facility “is rapidly decreasing.” Also, maintenance scheduled for Tuesday and Friday of this week and on Sept. 4 (see Daily GPI, Aug. 23) will require that Northwest rely on storage to balance the system. The storage activities on the maintenance days likely will involve withdrawals from Jackson Prairie and injections into Questar’s Clay Basin facility. Northwest’s storage account must be full on Sept. 30, as required by the Jackson Prairie partnership agreement.