Requirements

With El Paso Natural Gas and its full requirements (FR) customers scoreless after several months of negotiations, FERC last week sent the two sides into extra innings. The Commission on Wednesday pushed back the deadline for the planned system-wide conversion on El Paso of FR service to contract demand (CD) service from Nov. 1 of this year to May 1, 2003, allowing existing CD shippers whose transportation capacity may be subject to pro rata cuts during the interim period to receive demand charge credits.

Bidding for turned-back capacity on El Paso Natural Gas by full-requirements (FR) shippers will come to a close Friday, despite a last-minute plea by a group of FR shippers for FERC to postpone the deadline, and a challenge by California regulators and utilities to El Paso’s decision to give FR shippers preferential access to the capacity. The bidding is seen as a critical first step in the FERC-ordered plan to convert all of the FR shippers on El Paso to contract-demand (CD) service by Nov. 1 of this year, and end a years-long dispute over the disparate manner in which capacity has been allocated on the pipeline.

While Wall Street analysts and ratings agencies with post-Enron jitters were coming down hard on Dynegy Corp. Friday, traders in the market brushed aside the latest ratings changes, saying they had no problems with the veteran marketing company as a counterparty.

The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) has adopted emergency rules that would require the state’s licensed marketers to meet more stringent financial qualifications. The rules, approved this week by the Commission and submitted to the Illinois secretary of state, take effect March 1, when the systemwide customer choice program by Nicor Gas is scheduled to begin.

In what at first glance appears to be part of the continuing fallout from the rapid downfall and bankruptcy of Enron Corp., the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week amended its rules and forms to require more transparent company disclosures of employee stock option plans (ESOP) and other equity compensation arrangements.

Given the inability of the natural gas standards-setting organization to resolve the issue of intra-day recalls of released transportation capacity, FERC has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) that would give releasing shippers the flexibility to re-nominate their recalled capacity at the next scheduling opportunity provided by an interstate pipeline.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has upheld its earlier order imposing a heavy reporting requirement on transporters and sellers of natural gas into the California market.

Given the inability of the natural gas standards-setting organization to resolve the issue of intra-day recalls of released transportation capacity, FERC has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) that would give releasing shippers the flexibility to re-nominate their recalled capacity at the next scheduling opportunity provided by an interstate pipeline.

As the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) considers whether to overhaul or eliminate its integrated resource planning (IRP) requirements for electric utilities in the state, the state commission is being urged to create a process that does not limit the resource options of utilities, while also allowing the PUC to continue its support of demand-side programs, among other things.