Rules

Mirroring a recent complaint brought against Trunkline Pipeline, a group of natural gas producers and marketers called on FERC Wednesday to order El Paso’s Tennessee Pipeline to “discontinue immediately” its alleged practice of using multi-year “critical notices” to enforce tougher quality specifications on the gas that it will accept into its system.

A voice on the buyer side of the natural gas market joined a supplier chorus in making a Canadian counterpart to the appeals of American producers for improved access to resource development targets in the United States.

A federal judge in Houston ruled last week that former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and Northern Trust Corp., the trustee of Enron’s 401(k) retirement plan, may be sued under federal pension law for allegedly failing to protect the bankrupt company’s employees.

A federal judge in Houston has ruled that former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and the trustee of Enron’s 401(k) retirement plan, Northern Trust Corp., may be sued under federal pension law for allegedly failing to protect the bankrupt company’s employees.

As expected, the natural gas futures market experienced another high-volatility trading session Friday as traders kept an eye on Hurricane Isabel. Prices dove lower during the first hour of trading only to rebound convincingly in the afternoon as traders were reticent to be short heading into the weekend. October finished at $4.766, up 2.8 cents for the day, and down only a scant half-cent for the week.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has refused an appeal by the administration to overturn a lower court’s discovery order that requires Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force to turn over the names of companies that participated in drawing up the administration’s energy policy.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has refused an appeal by the administration to overturn a lower court’s discovery order that requires Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force to turn over the names of companies that participated in drawing up the administration’s energy policy.

In a case that tests the limits of how far California went in establishing third-party, non-utility natural gas storage, two of the state’s energy heavyweights — Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Calpine Corp. — are going toe-to-toe over allegations that Calpine has “colluded” with a third-party storage operator, Lodi Gas Storage. PG&E’s utility wants state regulators to come down hard on both the merchant operators.

Normally friendly and past partners in various deals, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Calpine Corp. are at odds over what the utility alleges is the merchant power plant developer/operator’s conspiring with merchant natural gas storage operators at Lodi in Northern California to bypass the PG&E utility backbone pipeline transmission system. As a result, PG&E’s utility alleges that natural gas retail customers could pay an extra $20 million.