Saying

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying that published spot natural gas prices at California points during the western energy crisis from Oct. 2, 2000 through June 20, 2001 are suspect, has called for comments on whether it should change the gas cost component used to calculate the mitigated market clearing price (MMCP) for power in a case involving refunds of excess power costs (EL00-95).

Echoing what state politicians and regulators have been saying for a long time, California’s attorney general Monday asked for a rehearing of a May 31 order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regarding the state AG’s earlier complaint against seven marketers selling wholesale power supplies in the state.

Reliant declared force majeure Thursday, saying the #1 unit at its Malvern (AR) Compressor Station will be unavailable for an estimated four to five months due to an unscheduled overhaul. At present the pipeline expects this outage to have “very limited impact to capacity,” but as traditional cooling load increases this summer, it may have to limit IT, Authorized Overrun Service and secondary capacity in the Quadrangle System and on Line AC.

Natural gas and oil prices are up, and while saying “we remain very bullish on the longer term outlook for natural gas prices over the next couple of years,” some producers are opting to be safe rather than sorry in the short term, increasing their hedges for 2002 over the last few weeks. Three companies — Energen Resources, Comstock Resources and Magnum Hunter Resources — announced new natural gas and oil hedges last week, taking advantage of price levels they had not expected to see and bringing volumes hedged in 2002 to between 23% and 70% of production.

Northern Natural Gas issued a System Overrun Limitation notice (similar to a low-linepack OFO) for all market-area zones Monday.

Saying linepack had stabilized, El Paso canceled Friday an Overpull Penalty Alert that had been issued Wednesday morning. While the OFO was still in place, El Paso postponed repairs on the Dilkon Station’s B turbine until next week. The pipeline had expected to begin the work, which will cause a 30 MMcf/d reduction of North Mainline capacity, last Wednesday.

Saying it was experiencing maximum withdrawals at the Washington Ranch storage facility, El Paso declared an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty situation Wednesday morning due to low linepack. Because of the OFO and high system demand, a maintenance shutdown of Line 1100 upstream of Guadalupe Station that had been scheduled for today was postponed until further notice.

Saying its storage pools are full and customers are overdelivering gas into its system, Dominion has implemented an OFO to protect its system integrity. The order affects all customers under Rate Schedules FT, FTNN, IT and MCS.

Both Duke Energy-operated pipelines, Texas Eastern and Algonquin, issued Critical System Warnings Sunday saying that based on anticipated system operations and weather conditions, all customers were required to immediately “eliminate excess receipts and conform scheduled receipts to actual deliveries.” The warnings will remain in effect until further notice. Texas Eatern noted that with unseasonably mild weather in the market area and shippers filling contract storage inventories in anticipation of the heating season, its storage capacity is now about 98% full, leaving little system flexibility. If mitigating action isn’t taken, an OFO with non-compliance penalties of $25/Dth may become necessary, the pipeline said. Without specifically mentioning a potential OFO, Algonquin said it may adjust customer nominations and/or revise scheduled quantities to halt further accumulation of imbalances. “In addition, AGT may take any actions within its operational capabilities to reduce excess receipts,” it added. No due-pipe imbalance makeup is being accepted until further notice.