Stops

Hilcorp Energy Co. has stopped stimulating two horizontal shale wells in western Pennsylvania as state regulators investigate what caused a small earthquake on Monday near the company’s operations, a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesperson said Wednesday.

After several years of processing and various starts and stops, a plan to repower an existing natural gas-fired coastal electric generation plant in North San Diego County using a fraction of the 100-acre existing prime seaside acreage was unanimously approved Thursday by the California Energy Commission (CEC). Commissioners set aside possible conflicts with local and state zoning restrictions.

It’s now or never, and it’s not just the energy industry that’s pulling out all the stops to push a national energy policy through the Congress. Unnatural allies, business and labor, joined the rally with a press briefing Wednesday, the day before debate is scheduled to begin and a comprehensive energy bill, H.R. 6 is expected to emerge from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

This week’s erosion of prices (not counting isolated pockets of firmness, mostly in the West) slowed to a crawl Thursday as further declines were limited to about 30 cents or less, and quite a few points (again, mostly in the West) registered moderate gains of up to about a quarter.

Ending a four-day, 21-cent rally, natural gas futures reversed lower Thursday as weak long traders headed for the exits amid bearish weather news. After opening at Wednesday’s high at $2.40, the prompt month took on the trajectory of a safe pushed out of a 10 story building, falling 14 cents in the first 45 minutes of trading yesterday. From that point forward, February checked to either side of $2.26 on a heavy volume of 123,632 contracts. February closed at $2.254, down 14 cents from Wednesday’s settle.

Senate Republicans pulled out all the stops last week to get the Democratic leadership to move on energy legislation before the end of the session, and even vowed to tack on an energy bill to other legislation such as the economic-stimulus measure pending in the upper chamber.

Although its $2 billion acquisition of Portland General Electric is in doubt, Reno-based Sierra Pacific Resources likes the law passed last Wednesday by the Nevada legislature because it promises to protect Sierra’s two electric utilities from the soaring western wholesale electricity prices that have eroded the finances of California’s two largest utilities.

Although its $2 billion acquisition of Portland General Electric is in doubt, Reno-based Sierra Pacific Resources likes the law passed late Wednesday by the Nevada legislature because it promises to protect Sierra’s two electric utilities from the soaring western wholesale electricity prices that have eroded the finances of California’s two largest utilities.

Although FERC is pulling out the stops to address this summer’s upheaval in California’s bulk power market, Chairman James J. Hoecker made clear last week that most of the responsibility for correcting the dysfunctional electric market lies with the California legislators and regulators who created it.