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The rich emerging from California’s tattered energy market may get richer later this year if California state regulators agree with an administrative law judge’s recommendation to reward Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. utility nearly $31 million for its gas-buying successes in 2001 that saved consumers an estimated $224 million in avoided wholesale costs for natural gas at a time when prices were skyrocketing.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) has recommended that the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) develop a “systematic process” for measuring the progress of its research and development (R&D) programs that are designed to improve the safety of natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines, and to report the results to Congress each year.

Despite a third straight triple-digit weekly storage injection (114 Bcf), natural gas futures surged Thursday in three distinct waves of short-covering and speculative buying. When the dust had settled and the orders counted at Nymex, the numbers were impressive: July natural gas futures rose 36 cents to close at $5.941, just off its new one-week high of $5.95. In contrast to the first three trading days of this week, volume at Nymex was heavy Thursday, with an estimated 92,607 contracts changing hands.

An administrative law judge (ALJ) has recommended that the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approve UniSource Energy Corp.’s proposed acquisition of gas and electric system assets from Citizens Communications Inc. The judge also approved a substantial increase in the gas and electric rates charged by Citizens.

An administrative law judge (ALJ) last week recommended that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission throw out the complaints filed by PacifiCorp against four power brokers, saying the complaints attempting to break contracts worth about $67 million are “in essence an attack on the validity of market-based rates… If [PacifiCorp] is correct, no contract made under market-based rate authority is valid,” and “no reasonable seller of electricity at wholesale in interstate commerce would seek or use market-based rate authority.”

An administrative law judge (ALJ) has recommended that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission throw out the complaints filed by PacifiCorp against four power brokers, saying the complaints attempting to break contracts worth about $67 million are “in essence an attack on the validity of market-based rates… If [PacifiCorp] is correct, no contract made under market-based rate authority is valid.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff has recommended that the Commission set requirements for natural gas price publications to use in conducting their price surveys, which the Commission then would review before allowing jurisdictional companies to use the published prices in any rate formulas.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) can’t say for sure whether its program in which it takes oil and natural gas from producers in lieu of cash royalty payments has been a success or failure, said the General Accounting Office (GAO).

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff has recommended that the Commission set requirements for natural gas price publications to use in conducting their price surveys, which the Commission then would review before allowing jurisdictional companies to use the published prices in any rate formulas.