Nevada

NV Energy Inc. announced last Friday that its northern Nevada utility lowered retail natural gas and electric rates effective that day. It’s a continuation of a two-year downward trend in the utility’s retail rates, reflecting reductions on the wholesale level.

The Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has been awarded $816,274 of funding under the federal stimulus package to be applied to employee hiring and training. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding is designated to help the state regulatory commission handle its increased workload caused by various renewable energy, efficiency, smart grid technology, transmission and demand response issues surfacing to address global climate change. Funds will be used to train existing personnel and hire two new staff positions assigned exclusively to the alternative energy sector, said PUC Executive Director Crystal Jackson. “We have seen a substantial increase in activity in these areas, and we expect even more in the coming years,” Jackson said. The state regulatory panel is facing a number of major renewable energy, efficiency and transmission cases in the next two years, and the new positions and training funds will be applied to its 2011-2013 fiscal year budgets.

California has become an afterthought in the now low-key debate about a liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal on the West Coast of the United States. Twice over the past 40 years of global LNG trade, California has been a focal point for U.S. western imports, and twice high expectations have crashed amid harsh local and state permitting requirements.

Flat performances at the Southern California border and the Kern Delivery point in Arizona/Nevada were the only exceptions to cash prices continuing to rise across the board Tuesday. Forecasts of Wednesday lows in the 20s and 30s (and occasionally in the teens) from the Northeast through the Midwest and Upper Plains into the Rockies kept heating load at a relatively strong level for late March, and the cash market had extra support from the previous day’s 26.4-cent increase by April futures.

Only the two Arizona/Nevada points in NGI’s price index table avoided an overall downturn Tuesday as cold fronts were expected to keep summer heat subdued in key northern market areas. Monday’s decline of 2.6 cents by September futures added a further minor bearish note to Tuesday’s cash trading.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who appears destined to be the next majority leader, said Wednesday one of his priorities during the upcoming lame-duck session is to reach a deal to open up more of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and natural gas drilling.

The 480 MW El Dorado power plant in Nevada may become a utility owned and operated facility under provisions of a $5 million settlement that Sempra Energy and its two California utilities reached with the state regulatory commission and attorney general’s office, Sempra announced Friday. San Diego-based Sempra placed the after-tax cost of the settlement at “less than $5 million.”

The Nevada Public Utilities Commission last Wednesday approved an expansion of Sierra Pacific Power Co.’s natural gas service territory in the north end of the state. The PUC gave the OK for the Sierra Pacific Resources utility to annex contiguous areas in Storey and Lyon Counties.

Key Democratic lawmakers, including Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Senate Budget Committee’s approval Thursday of a provision authorizing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as part of the budget package for fiscal year 2007.