Push

California’s wholesale electricity situation looks good for this summer’s peak-demand periods, but in the longer term the state’s aggressive push to get more renewable resource-based power continues to worry the head of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Yakout Mansour. The CAISO CEO held a conference call with reporters last Monday to mark the release of the grid operator’s annual market performance report, a newly approved five-year strategy and CAISO’s 10th anniversary of operations.

The cash market advanced at all points Thursday, getting a major push from the previous day’s 38.8-cent gain by April futures and still finding a generous amount of heating load in northern market areas.

With spreading above-normal temperatures starting to push daily highs into the 80s across much of the East and in some inland parts of the West and past 100 in the desert Southwest, the resultant increase in power generation load had prices rallying at most points Tuesday. The return of industrial demand from a holiday weekend and a reduction of excess supply issues in the West also contributed to the overall bullishness.

Higher natural gas prices are expected to push wholesale prices for electricity up across the entire United States this summer, FERC analysts said Thursday. Under normal summer weather conditions, however, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) is forecasting electricity capacity margins to be adequate to ensure reliable service across North America.

As traders continue in their attempts to push natural gas futures prices north of $8/Mcf, Baker Hughes reported Friday that the number of oil and natural gas rotary rigs in the United States actively drilling on land and in U.S. waters remained flat from the previous week at 1,747 while Canadian rigs climbed by eight to 89.

Coming as part of Ontario’s push for more green power generation, the province announced last week that its electricity grid will soon get a boost from 14 new renewable energy projects, one of which will become North America’s largest solar farm.

Coming as the antithesis to Monday’s humdrum directionless trading action, Tuesday saw natural gas futures traders push the May contract to new highs for the move at $7.930 before closing out the regular session at $7.869, up 32.3 cents from Monday.

The Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA), which represents more than 150 municipal gas and electric utilities in the state, last week joined a push by the American Public Gas Association (APGA) to support strengthening the gas market transparency language in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reauthorization legislation.

The Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA), which represents more than 150 municipal gas and electric utilities in the state, joined a push by the American Public Gas Association (APGA) on Thursday to support strengthening the gas market transparency language in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reauthorization legislation.