Real

Just as “location, location and location” are the three key market factors to a real estate agent, it was all “weather, weather and weather” that was meaningful to gas traders Thursday. Strong price increases continued, although the uphill slope wasn’t quite as steep as the day before. Nearly all of Thursday’s increases ranged from about a dime to 20 cents with little geographical variation.

Pennsylvania faces the very real threat of being dethroned as the nation’s leading model for electricity choice because skyrocketing wholesale power prices are pushing state customers to abandon electric choice in favor of default providers, according to the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets. As Pennsylvania stumbles on the road to electric deregulation, Texas, Maine and New York are all making impressive strides in promoting sustainable competition among electricity providers, the center said.

There’s one key requirement when building merchant power plants in Texas: think big, real big. FPL Energy LLC clearly followed that condition in announcing yesterday that it will take a lead role in building a 1,789 MW gas-fired merchant plant in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It will be one of the largest independent generation projects in the state.

Since its reintroduction to the north country in 1995, ApacheCorp. continues on its steadfast course of absorbing Canadian realestate at a fever pitch. Almost a month after Phillips Petroleumput its Canadian assets in the Zama area of northwest Alberta onthe market, the company reported that it has entered into adefinitive agreement in which Apache will acquire the oil and gasassets for $490 million. The properties included have provedreserves of 71.6 million boe, of which 59% is natural gas (seeDaily GPI, Nov. 21).

In the midst of a real potential cold weather energy/supplycrisis hovering over the state, the California Energy CommissionWednesday approved a new 500 MW natural gas-fired electricgeneration plant that could help head off shortages in 2002 and twopeaking plants totaling 371 MW that should be online by theupcoming summer of 2001.

Enron Energy Services and Macerich Co., a publicly traded realestate investment trust, announced a 10-year energy managementagreement for more than 40 wholly-owned and joint ventureproperties. Enron will manage the supply of electricity and naturalgas and provide related energy management services for theproperties, including energy infrastructure upgrades.

Just so you’ll know: “The natural gas market is a real successstory. …FERC has gotten an enormous amount of things right. Themarket may not be unblemished, but there are lots who consider thenatural gas market the best market in the world offering genuineprice discovery on a daily basis across dozens of products. It’ssomething everyone should be proud of,” Robert Levin of the NewYork Mercantile Exchange told a FERC conference yesterday.

In less than two years, the energy industry has been transformedfrom a traditional service industry into a real-time convergence ofinformation, work flows, e-business and knowledge, and thosecompanies that don’t keep pace to benefit from the new age willbecome victims, regardless of what they have to offer.

In less than two years, the energy industry has been transformedfrom a traditional service industry into a real-time convergence ofinformation, work flows, e-business and knowledge, and thosecompanies that don’t keep pace to benefit from the new age willbecome victims, regardless of what they have to offer.