Secure

It lasted only a few hours, but the first power alert for the year from the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) last Monday raised the pitch of discussion about the state’s summer power reserve adequacy. Most observers agreed the Stage One alert was not a harbinger of any undue problems.

The nation’s largest municipal utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), feels secure in being able to avoid any negative impact from Wednesday’s federal decisions on pending California electricity crisis cases, and in hedging against the current and projected volatility in wholesale natural gas prices, according to General Manager David Wiggs in an interview Monday with NGI/Power Market Today.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to a $3 million settlement with Dynegy Inc. Tuesday, settling the first of its far-reaching investigations of energy merchants’ “round-trip” transactions. It also completed its scrutiny of a Dynegy off-balance sheet transaction.

After two years of fruitless negotiations and regulatory wrangling, an attempt to secure access for central Canada to natural gas from offshore of Nova Scotia has been shelved.

After two years of fruitless negotiations and regulatory wrangling, an attempt to secure access for central Canada to natural gas from offshore of Nova Scotia has been shelved.

Producers and consumers alike stand to gain if Quebec and Ontario secure access to natural gas from the new production fields offshore of Nova Scotia that have to date been tapped almost entirely for exports to the northeastern United States, according to Gaz Metropolitain of Montreal and Enbridge Inc., owner of Toronto distributor Enbridge Consumers’ Gas. The two companies are proposing to build a new pipeline, the Cartier project, that would connect markets in Quebec City with a new lateral off of the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline in New Brunswick.

Cheniere Energy Inc. announced that it has entered into an agreement with the Port Authority of Brownsville, TX to secure its second LNG terminal site. Cheniere said it acquired a three-year option on a 125-acre site within the Port of Brownsville for the purpose of building an LNG terminal. Under the agreement, Cheniere has the right to convert the option into a long-term lease. Cheniere previously announced plans to acquire three sites on the Texas Gulf Coast to develop LNG receiving terminals and that it had acquired a three-year option for an initial LNG terminal site in Freeport, TX. Cheniere believes that in the next decade, LNG could supply the U.S. market with 15 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) or more of natural gas. Current capacity in existing domestic terminals, including expansion, is limited to less than 5 Bcf/d.

For all of the talk that President George W. Bush’s team wouldsecure an energy agreement with Mexican President Vicente Fox intheir day-long meeting Friday, it appears that’s all it was, bigtalk. They were expected to forge stronger ties, but a neighborlyenergy policy to open electricity markets to competition is, atbest, a long-range (pipe) dream.

For all of the talk that President George W. Bush’s team willsecure an energy agreement with Mexican President Vicente Fox, itappears that’s all it is, big talk. When they hold their firstofficial meeting today, they may forge stronger ties, but aneighborly energy policy to open electricity markets to competitionis, at best, a long-range (pipe) dream.