Small

A small, but hot new fight before the National Energy Board ismaking it official — in Canada, natural gas has become as good asgold, and just the prospect of producing some is worth a battle.

A small, but hot new fight before the National Energy Board ismaking it official — in Canada, natural gas has become as good asgold, and just the prospect of producing some is worth a battle.

Bills passed last week by the California legislature capping rates for small and medium-sized San Diego Gas & Electric customers through 2003 and speeding up siting of new power plants were the latest in a two-week series of events aimed at rescuing the state from its power market crisis.

Peoples Gas, a subsidiary of Peoples Energy, is expanding itscustomer choice program this September to include up to 82,000small commercial and industrial customers within the City ofChicago. Eligible customers can begin enrolling on Sept. 1 in thecompany’s Choices For You(SM) program.

After a hard fight over a small project assigned bigsignificance by the contestants, the National Energy Board (NEB)has upheld the doctrine that has ushered pipeline competition intothe Canadian natural-gas community. An NEB panel under boardChairman Ken Vollman approved a new, producer-sponsored bypass ofthe TransCanada-Nova system in Alberta, rejecting pleas for thefederal agency to stop setting precedents favoring new entries intogas transportation.

Contango Oil & Gas Co. may be small — it only had threeemployees two months ago — but no one can say the Houston companydoesn’t have big plans.

They may have to start handing out seat belts at Nymex justprior to the release of American Gas Association’s weekly gasstorage report each Wednesday. In a span of only a few minutesfollowing the 2 p.m. report of a 65 Bcf injection last week intostorage, September futures spiked to $4.565, its highest levelsince June 28, but then immediately plummeted back into the low$4.40s.

After dropping a quick nickel in Thursday’s after-hours Accesstrading session, natural gas futures did an about-face Friday astraders learned of the first named storm in the 2000 Atlantichurricane season. The September contract was fast out of the chute,notching a gap-higher open on the daily charts and climbingthroughout the morning. However, after reaching fresh five-weekhighs at $4.39, it came under steady profit taking, which trimmedgains into the closing bell.

The cash market managed to rebound Monday from the weekend’smild softness, but the bounce back up was small. Monday’s quotesranged from flat to almost a dime higher, with most of the upticksless than a nickel.