Portions

The House Thursday passed for a second time the $300 billion farm legislation that closes the “Enron Loophole,” which has allowed portions of large electronic trading platforms to circumvent the full oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for years. Lawmakers were expected to vote later Thursday on Title III of the farm bill, which was inadvertently left out of the first bill sent to President Bush, and which forced the second vote.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal wants the U.S. Forest Service to redo portions of a draft supplemental environmental impact study (EIS) on possible oil and gas drilling impacts in the Wyoming Range after claiming that a producer was allowed to “guide and fund” the study and privately participate in agency meetings.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal wants the U.S. Forest Service to redo portions of a draft supplemental environmental impact study (EIS) on possible oil and gas drilling impacts in the Wyoming Range after claiming that a producer was allowed to “guide and fund” the study and privately participate in agency meetings.

The House Resources Committee Wednesday voted out by a wide margin amended legislation that seeks to open currently closed portions of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and natural gas drilling and increase coastal states’ share of revenues from offshore production.

The House Resources Committee on Monday introduced a compromise bill that would open up heretofore closed portions of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and gas drilling and would give states a greater share of the royalty pie from offshore production.

Many of the steps that led to the successful introduction of competition in ERCOT six years ago still have not taken place in portions of northeast Texas served by Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) and the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) portion of American Electric Power (AEP), and those areas should not be deregulated before 2011, a coalition of the affected cities and AEP told the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) in comments. The PUCT apparently agrees.

Tidelands Oil & Gas Corp.’s Mexican pipeline subsidiary, Terranova Energia, was awarded a permit by the Comision Reguladora de Energia de Mexico (CRE) to build the 1.2 Bcf/d Terranova Occidente and Oriente pipeline portions of its Burgos Hub Export/Import Project in northeastern Mexico.

With frigid cold engulfing large portions of the country and winter storms sweeping east, natural gas futures traders pushed the January contract on Thursday to a high of $15.100, a new all-time high for any prompt month, unseating the old record of $14.750 that was set by the November 2005 futures contract on Oct. 5. January natural gas ended up settling at a new all-time prompt month high settle Thursday at $14.994, up an incredible $1.294 for the day.

Power plant developer/operator Calpine Corp. Tuesday was directed by a Delaware court to work out a plan in the next week for returning more than $300 million in proceeds from oil/gas asset sales whose earlier distribution had been challenged by two sets of corporate bondholders. The monies need to be distributed back into The Bank of New York, a collateral trustee and one of the plaintiffs filing the lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery.