Reasons

TECO Energy reported late last week that higher commodity pricesand colder weather are the primary reasons it expects to exceedconsensus earnings forecasts for the first quarter. TECO forecaststhat it will beat First Call’s consensus of $0.46 per share byexceeding $0.50 per share, more than 15% higher than the sameperiod last year.

State regulators and consumer advocates expressed deep concernover high gas prices last week at the winter committee meetings ofthe National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners inWashington, D.C. But industry officials said record drillingefforts will eventually solve the problem and already may be havingan impact.

Need a reason to embrace the future of the power industry? Howabout 10 reasons? Several U.S. utility executives last week offeredtheir upbeat take on the power generation and natural gas outlookfor the next five years, with El Paso Energy, Reliant Energy,Dynegy Inc. and Williams Energy Services giving a birds-eye view ofwhat’s ahead during a forum at PowerMart 2000 in Houston.

Need a reason to embrace the future of the power industry? Howabout 10 reasons? Several U.S. utility executives yesterday offeredtheir upbeat take on the power generation and natural gas outlookfor the next five years, with El Paso Energy, Reliant Energy,Dynegy Inc. and Williams Energy Services executives giving abirds-eye view of what’s ahead during an executive forum atPowerMart 2000 in Houston.

More security. More electronic commerce solutions. Moreflexibility. Those are a few of the reasons that e-commerce leaderAltra Energy Technologies Inc. announced yesterday it will upgradeits Internet web-based services by using Extensible MarkupLanguage, or XML, to integrate its AltraWeb Product. XML is aprecise, cutting-edge version of its forerunner, hypertext markuplanguage (HTML), the basic language used to communicate on theWorld Wide Web.

The New York Mercantile Exchange’s electricity futures contractsfailed to take off for a number of reasons but the market is worseoff because of their failure, according to Jack Cogen, president ofNew York City-based NatSource.

With little in the way of fundamental support to speak of, cashprices still managed gains between a nickel and a dime Tuesday atalmost every trading point. “It’s got to be technical,” said autility buyer. The tone was set by the screen opening around $1.80,a dime higher than Monday’s opening, even though the April contracteventually ended the day with a small net loss, he said. Anothersource thought it was a case of cash starting to converge with thescreen.

Market participants cited short-covering and relatively strongcash prices as the main reasons for a 7.4-cent gain turned in bythe March Nymex contract Tuesday. The contract flirted around theminor resistance level of $1.81 for most of the day before settlingslightly higher at $1.818.