Solving

The natural gas industry can play a key role in solving the world’s climate change puzzle, but time is running out for the industry to step into the breech, according to Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation and a former U.S. senator from Colorado.

The natural gas industry can play a key role in solving the world’s climate change puzzle, but time is running out for the industry to step into the breech, according to Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation and a former U.S. senator from Colorado.

TransCanada’s proposal for a gasline to commercialize Alaska’s vast North Slope reserves depends upon the state’s three major producers “solving a maze of problems in Canada…and does not merit state support,” a former Alaska governor wrote in a recent newspaper editorial.

Noting new federal energy regulators offered a “refreshing, problem-solving approach,” California Gov. Gray Davis said his 90-minute meeting in Sacramento Monday with FERC Commissioners Pat Wood and Nora M. Brownell was “both constructive and informative,” although there was no apparent resolution to the state’s nagging wholesale natural gas and electricity pricing problems.

Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) has come up with a novel wayof solving its capacity turnback problem with a service providingfirm hourly flexibility, but customers, particularly New EnglandLDCs, aren’t buying it.

Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) has come up with a novel wayof solving its capacity turnback problem with a service providingfirm hourly flexibility, but customers, particularly New EnglandLDCs, aren’t buying it.

Although it gets 13 parties to agree on solving the naggingproblem of imbalances, a new Pacific Gas and Electric settlementagreement on transmission and storage is just the first of a numberof changes anticipated under California’s ongoing gas industryrestructuring. Even for this step, state regulators still mustreact to the agreement and then market participants must assesswhether the provisions will result in the market efficiencies andcost-savings that shippers are anticipating.