Settlement

After closing down 16.8 cents at $5.765 on Thursday, the natural gas futures May contract went for a run Friday morning, notching a high of $5.920 in morning trading, before settling down to close at $5.812, up 4.7 cents on the day.

Piggybacking on the electricity rate cut from its bankruptcy settlement this month, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Wednesday that its retail natural gas utility bills will drop 33.8% in March due to a combination of expected lower demand and declining wholesale prices. The average bill of $68 in February will drop to $45.78 this month, the PG&E utility said.

As with every other non-expiration day at Nymex, Thursday’s daily natural gas settlement prices were calculated using a weighted average of the final two minutes of trading. What sets Thursday apart from every other day in the commodity’s 13-year history is that this decisive two-minute trading window took place from 11:28 to 11:30 a.m. EST.

FERC last Thursday approved a series of settlement agreements previously hammered out between Commission staff and four power companies, as well as a city in California, resolving allegations that the power-related entities tried to game California’s electricity market in 2000-2001. Under the settlements, the power companies and the California city will pay a total of $141,834.

Four energy companies and one city in California will pay a total of $141,834 under western gaming-related settlement agreements reached between them and FERC staff and approved by the full Commission at its regular agenda meeting on Thursday.

Enron Corp. has put 12 major energy assets, including Portland General Electric, Transwestern Pipeline, Northern Plains, Citrus Corp. and many other international assets, which make up nearly all of what is left of the company, formally on the auction block. The company has extended invitations to potential bidders to visit electronic data rooms containing information about its most valuable businesses and has executed confidentiality agreements.

Following months of negotiations that led to a settlement agreement in August, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has approved GPU Inc.’s merger with FirstEnergy Corp. Now all that stands in the way is an approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, after which the financial closing of the transaction would take place.

In the absence of a state legislative solution or another negotiated settlement to rescue financially troubled Southern California Edison Co. from bankruptcy, a small Long Beach, CA-based street lighting company is continuing its longshot quest to buy the utility and its parent, Edison International, by establishing a network of cities and townships served by Edison to ensure the deal’s economic and political viability.

The Mid-Atlantic Power Supply Association (MAPSA) has filed a petition before the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court requesting a review of an order issued by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) that MAPSA claims will bail out GPU utilities at the expense of electric customers and competitors.