Responsible

Hot weather forecasts were responsible for keeping prices on the rise at nearly all points Monday in the Midcontinent and West. But heavy rains and/or cold fronts trimmed back some of the cooling load that had started building late last week in the East’s northern market areas and already pervaded the South. The result was substantive price drops at virtually all non-Midcontinent points in the East.

A skeleton crew of six Minerals Management Services (MMS) employees from the New Orleans regional office is operating out of the Interior Department’s Minerals Royalty Management office in Houston, and is responsible for compiling the estimates on shut-in oil and natural gas production and damages to production platforms, pipelines and other structures in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf of Mexico.

The “perfect storm” of events, including Enron’s fall and the financial crisis in energy trading, was responsible for sinking Mirant Corp. into bankruptcy, not alleged actions of its former parent, according to a legal brief filed by the Southern Co. in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas.

ChevronTexaco CEO Dave O’Reilly said it’s time for the United States to “get real about energy,” and encourage responsible development in remote or inaccessible regions like the Outer Continental Shelf, Alaska and the Rocky Mountain states.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found no evidence that natural gas traders were responsible for the run-up in gas prices during the cold snap in the New England markets last January, the head of the agency’s Office of Market Oversight and Investigations (OMOI) told a group of state regulators Monday.

Dynegy Inc. has named Layne J. Albert as vice president – tax. In this capacity, Albert will be responsible for all tax matters relating to the company and its business segments. He will report to CFO Nick Caruso. Albert, 38, has more than 12 years of tax and tax-related experience and most recently was vice president of taxes with Encompass Services Corp., where he was employed for the past five years. Albert also has worked for Tenneco Inc., Ernst & Young LLP and Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams and Martin, a Houston-based law firm. Albert earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – Accounting from the University of Texas at Austin, a doctorate of jurisprudence from South Texas College of Law and a master’s degree in Laws in Taxation from the University of Houston.

The electric grid operator responsible for the New England states last Tuesday said that an independent review of the competitive performance of the region’s deregulated wholesale electricity market found that the New England market is workably competitive, producing little evidence of the deliberate withholding of generating resources from the marketplace.

Whatever among several possible reasons was responsible for Tuesday’s sharp price upticks was losing its power Wednesday. The market was retreating across the board in movements ranging from flat to more than a dime lower. However, Algonquin citygates were the only points with declines exceeding a dime; other drops were mostly around a nickel or less. Sources could detect no signs of another rally being in the cards.

Top U.S. pipeline industry leaders and key trade associations united Tuesday to urge the passage of an effective and responsible bill to promote the safety of more than two million miles of oil and natural gas pipelines.