Pricing

For the third day in a row, flat pricing dominated the cash market Thursday. A bit of approaching moderation of winter weather in the Northeast was approximately balanced by the previous day’s strength throughout Nymex’s energy futures group.

The cash market turned in a mixed performance Wednesday that was slightly weighted toward the downside. A few pockets of freezing temperatures remain, and induced gains of up to about a dime. Most points were flat to off a few cents, however, pressured by weak weather fundamentals in most regions.

The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) has published the September natural gas marketer pricing page on its web site in order to give consumers what it said was a true “apples to apples” and total bill comparisons of the differences between marketer rate plan offers. The chart indicates that a bill for a typical variable rate customer in Georgia may vary by more than $15, depending on which marketer is chosen. The price per therm advertised by a marketer “may not give an accurate comparison since some marketers bill certain charges separately while others include them in the per therm rate,” according to the PSC. In addition, monthly customer service charges may vary from $4.75 to $14.75. Georgia law provides that the “price for natural gas billed to a natural gas customer shall not exceed the marketer’s published price effective at the beginning of the consumer’s billing cycle.” Additional information on consumer complaints concerning natural gas marketers may be found on the Gas Marketer Scoreboard at www.psc.state.ga.us/consumer_corner/scorecard.html.

Moody’s Investors Service on Tuesday said it was maintaining a “developing” outlook on Dynegy Inc. and its subsidiaries following the company’s pricing for $1.45 billion of new second priority senior secured notes and $175 million of convertible subordinated debentures (see Daily GPI, Aug. 4).

Skipping Stone, a Houston consulting firm, has offered its solution to the natural gas pricing and index issue. It advocates the creation of a non-profit data aggregator, The Energy Transaction Repository (ETR), to collect transaction data from market participants and provide services to match, verify and confirm the transactions.

Dynegy informed the trade press Tuesday of its decisions to stop reporting natural gas, liquids and power pricing information for index calculations and to exit the Committee of Chief Risk Officers, which has been developing guidelines for price reporting and indexing. The main reason for its decisions, Dynegy said, was its reorganization, particularly its plan to exit third-party energy marketing and trading, which is substantially complete.

Buoyed mostly by storage demand, modest firmness continued to dominate eastern markets Tuesday, although a few points were flat and only Transco Zone 6 non-New York managed a gain of more than about a dime. Softness reigned in most of the West, which not coincidentally is the only region that was not drawing down storage in the last two Energy Information Administration reports.

In addition to reporting lower financial results and cutting its full-year earnings guidance in its quarterly 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission (see Daily GPI, Dec. 24), Mirant also disclosed multiple accounting errors in previous financial statements. The company also told the SEC that it has received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California asking for details about possibly reporting inaccurate gas and power price information to the trade press.

Similar to other recent forays above the $3.00 mark, Wednesday’s price surge in the natural gas pit at Nymex was short-lived as locals and speculative accounts liquidated new longs and reinitiated short positions. After topping out at $3.04 at 10:15 a.m. EDT, the September contract shuffled lower throughout the session, ending down 6.5 cents at $2.91. Estimated volume was moderate, with 93,329 contracts changing hands.