Play

While saying liquefied natural gas (LNG) still has a role to play in California’s future energy portfolio, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday rejected Australia-based BHP Billiton’s proposed offshore LNG receiving terminal project, Cabrillo Port, on the basis that it failed to meet environmental standards.

With heating load continuing to dwindle, and the decline of industrial load over a weekend coming into play, prices fell at nearly all points Friday. A few scattered flat to a little more than a nickel higher locations averted a clean sweep of softening.

Completing a triple-play of sorts, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission Tuesday decided three separate issues for Spokane, WA-based Avista Utilities — a retail natural gas rate net decrease, a retail electric rate net increase, and a 20-year purchased power agreement for up to 11.99 MW as a qualifying facility (QF) project, but at rates less than the published QF tariff. The utility will pay $58.50/MWh, rather than the PUC’s $61.60/MWh rate for most QF contracts. Avista wanted to pay $49/MWh.

While it is pursuing a reduced carbon power generation portfolio that includes a bold nuclear power plant play, Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy, Inc.’s aggressive 10,000 MW, $15.9 billion long-term development plan is weighted toward an expectation that most of its new megawatts will come from natural gas- and clean coal-fired generation with a healthy dose of wind, according to a presentation Tuesday by CEO David Crane at NRG’s first day-long conference for financial analysts.

“The industry’s acreage land grab of the last five years is largely over. Virtually every conventional and unconventional gas resource play in the U.S. is totally locked up. The winners for the next 10 to 20 years have already been chosen and the losers will pay the price for years to come for being left behind.”

“The industry’s acreage land grab of the last five years is largely over. Virtually every conventional and unconventional gas resource play in the U.S. is totally locked up. The winners for the next 10 to 20 years have already been chosen and the losers will pay the price for years to come for being left behind.”

In California and parts of the Southwest, heat, combined with high demand and fires, were all in play as peak electricity demand stayed at or near record levels. Reserves were viewed as adequate to meet the challenge even in the face of what shapes up as record-breaking weekend loads, too.

Even with a fairly impressive amount of heating load remaining in play on the first official day of spring, the cash market was mostly softer as mixed pricing extended into a fourth straight trading day Monday.

The aftermath of last summer’s devastating hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico continued to play havoc with London-based BP plc’s production in the final quarter of 2005, with output down from a year ago and lost profits and repairs costing nearly $1 billion.