Place

The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given Horizon Pipeline Co. the green light to place in service its 70-mile pipeline that will transport 380 MMcf/d of natural gas from the Joliet Hub in Illinois near Chicago to the northeastern part of the state near McHenry, IL.

Williams announced an agreement to make semiannual interest payments on $1.4 billion of Williams Communications (WCG) debt and place the debt on its balance sheet this year. The deal removes the conditions under which Williams could have been obligated to come up with the entire $1.4 billion.

Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day notice for its market area in place through at least Friday and further tightened the tolerance for negative daily imbalances from 10% to 5%. FGT also said that as a result of the cold weather in Florida, it postponed the Phase V expansion-related work at Compressor Station 14 that had been scheduled for the Jan. 5-6 weekend (see Daily GPI, Dec. 19, 2001). The two-day Station 14 work is now set to begin Wednesday.

Although the state appears to have all the elements in place to successfully open its electricity markets to competition, the chairman of the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) continues to harbor serious doubts as to how such a move will accrue to the benefit of the state’s retail customers.

Ohio retail gas marketers will have to undergo new regulatory scrutiny, according to rules adopted by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio last week. Under the rules all retail marketers will have to file balance sheets, credit ratings and other relevant financial information among other requirements in order to obtain certification by the PUCO. Up to this point, retail marketers have been allowed to operate without certification.

Ohio retail gas marketers will have to undergo new regulatory scrutiny, according to rules adopted by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on Tuesday. Under the new rules all retail marketers will have to file balance sheets, credit ratings and other relevant financial information among other requirements in order to obtain certification by the PUCO. Up to this point, retail marketers have been allowed to operate without certification.

Northern Border said “concurrent unplanned compressor station outages upstream of Ventura” Monday evening prompted it to place a firm-only scheduling restriction on the 42-inch pipeline segment (Monchy/Port of Morgan to Ventura) for the gas days of Wednesday and today. Gas Control will re-evaluate conditions this morning to determine if the constraint will be lifted Friday.

In response to the crisis taking place just a few hundred yards away at the World Trade Center and along with every other commodity exchange in the country, the New York Mercantile Exchange indefinitely suspended natural gas futures trading yesterday morning before the opening of the regular open-outcry session at 9:30 (EST). At that time, October futures were called to open just about unchanged from Monday’s $2.392 close. As of press time last night, Nymex had still not made an official announcement as to when it might reopen for trading. However, all three major stock exchanges will be closed today prompting some to suggest Nymex will follow suit.

Alleging there is evidence that its customers would be overcharged by more than $1.4 billion, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. filed a suit last Tuesday in a state Superior Court in Sacramento asking that the state’s power-buying agency, the Department of Water Resources (DWR), be forced to hold a public hearing to determine if its estimated $13 billion in power purchases are accurate.