Right

If Puget Energy CEO Stephen Reynolds and his Australian-led private investment partners are right, their proposed merger will create a “sustainable model” for the energy industry to allow electric and natural gas utilities to come up with staggering new capital funding levels to meet future infrastructure needs to produce, transport and deliver the nation’s home and business energy supplies. The deal does not require any change in the rates of Puget’s Bellevue, WA-based utility, Puget Sound Energy (PSE), according to Reynolds.

Federal lawmakers should consider resolving right-of-way (ROW) disputes involving tribal lands through specific legislation rather than through “broader changes that would affect tribal sovereignty or self-determination generally,” the U.S. Energy and Interior departments said in a recent report to Congress.

The global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market continues to grow and evolve, and it will be taking at least a portion of the North American natural gas market right along with it. According to one LNG industry veteran, there hasn’t been a time in the last 20 years that the business was changing faster than it is today.

Federal lawmakers should consider resolving right-of-way (ROW) disputes involving tribal lands through specific legislation rather than through “broader changes that would affect tribal sovereignty or self-determination generally,” the U.S. Energy and Interior departments said in a recent report to Congress.

The global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market continues to grow and evolve, and it will be taking at least a portion of the North American natural gas market right along with it. According to one LNG industry veteran, there hasn’t been a time in the last 20 years that the business was changing faster than it is today.

With the industry is still awash in talk surrounding the Bank of Montreal’s (BMO) recent natural gas trading losses of C$350-450 million (US$313.70-403.33 million), the aftershocks and tremors continue to be felt by others in the industry (see related story), including Valhalla, NY-based brokerage Optionable Inc., which reportedly has been linked to the bank. Some market watchers in their analysis of the event have gone as far as calling the natural gas market a “Catch-22,” where you get in just as much trouble by hedging as not hedging.

Although the global landscape is still unsettled for energy, and specifically liquefied natural gas (LNG), opportunities will continue to develop, and Sempra Energy has the right mix of trading, infrastructure development, operating and risk management skills to take advantage of whatever opportunities arise, said Sempra COO Neal Schmale, speaking at a company-hosted financial analysts meeting Thursday in San Diego. Sempra raised its 2007 earnings-per-share guidance to $3.75-3.95.

With the public outcry over rising power costs, Dominion Virginia Power believes the time is right for it to seek major changes to the regulatory structure of the power business in Virginia.

The convictions last week of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and his right hand man, former Enron CEO Jeffery Skilling are the Justice Department’s crowning achievement in a five-year battle against an era of corporate corruption and fraud that the Enron case, more than any other, came to symbolize.