Road

A month after Nicor Gas’ filing to expand its Customer Selectchoice program to all of its customers was suspended by theIllinois Commerce Commission (ICC), it announced it has received anunanimous approval from the same governing body to continue itspilot program for 2001.

After being on the divestiture road for almost a year andshedding $3 billion worth of non-core assets, TransCanada PipeLinesLtd., reported that its first nine months of 2000 and third quartershowed progress over the equivalent time periods of 1999. Netearnings before asset sales and long-term natural gas contractlosses were $433 million ($0.91 per share) for the first ninemonths of 2000, compared to $402 million ($0.86 per share) duringthe same period last year. The company attributed the 8% increaseto higher income from the power and gas marketing businesses aswell as reduced financial and preferred equity charges. Beforeadding special items, the company posted third quarter net earningsof $151 million ($0.32 per share), compared to $141 million ($0.30per share) for the third quarter of 1999.Deliveries of natural gason the Canadian Mainline and the BC system were approximately thesame for the first nine months of 2000 and 1999. The CanadianMainline delivered about 7.3 Bcf/d for both periods, while the BCsystem delivered approximately 1.1 Bcf/d. The Alberta system didexperience a decline. For the first nine months of 2000 itdelivered an average of 12.2 Bcf/d, compared with the same periodduring 1999 when it delivered 12.4 Bcf/d. Marketing also stumbled abit, as the company marketed about 6.1 Bcf/d for the first ninemonths of 2000, compared to 6.6 Bcf/d for the first nine months of1999. TransCanada took a beating on some long-term natural gascontracts it had entered into to support various pipelineinvestments and other business initiatives. Due to growing naturalgas demand in Alberta, and excess pipeline capacity leaving theprovince, the price differential between the Western CanadaSedimentary Basin and eastern market areas continued to shrink.TransCanada was forced to enter into third party arrangements tocrystallize the negative value of its long term natural gascontracts and the company reported taking a $124 million after-taxcharge associated with the losses.

Tennessee said road crossing work on its 800 Line will becompleted ahead of schedule. Barring unforeseen circumstances,service constraints upstream of Station 823 (Kinder, LA) will belifted for Saturday’s gas day.

The screen was back to putting on a spectacular show forwatchers again Monday. It took practically all day to get there,but the July futures contract kept pushing until it eventuallywound up at $4.398, up 35.5 cents on the day and just shy of thefinal June settlement at $4.406.

No bumps in the road so far for HoustonStreet.com, as tradersare motoring to its newest platform to buy and sell oil products.The web-based exchange expanded its virtual garage last Thursday,and now offers crude oil and refined product trading. The expansionadds to HoustonStreet’s energy markets, a cyber marketplace thathas been offering trades on wholesale power and natural gas salesnationwide since last summer.

Preparing to say farewell to the retail side of its business,Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) announced yesterday it will refund $34million to its former retail customers. The $26 per customer refundwill be issued by the 13 marketers in AGL’s service territoryduring the May/June billing cycle. It will be noted on customers’bills as a “GA PSC Ordered Credit,” which will be deducted from thetotal amount owed for service for the particular billing period.

Avista Corp., based in Spokane, WA, got on board the technologystock express last week as Washington state neighbor, Bill Gatestook a 5% stake in the company and Avista’s stock price just aboutdoubled.

Avista Corp., based in Spokane, WA, got on board the technologystock express last week as Washington state neighbor Bill Gatestook a 5% stake in the company and Avista’s stock price just aboutdoubled.

Columbia Energy Group’s (CG) board once again told NiSource, inno uncertain terms, to take a hike last week and urged CGshareholders to reject NiSource’s $68/share ($5.7 billion) hostiletakeover offer. NiSource took its offer to shareholders June 25 andsaid it will continue to fight for the deal. It had no tally ofshares tendered as of last week but said numbers would be availablesoon.