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Thursday’s hint that major weakness in spot prices could be in store played out in spades Friday. Plunges of close to half a dollar were common as the cash market bowed under the oppression of what little weather load it could find fading away in several regions, a day-earlier screen dive that continued Friday, a bearish storage report, Thursday’s news of storage injection opportunities declining further, and of course the extra loss of industrial load during a long holiday weekend.

North America’s leading independent producer EnCana Corp. is on track to also become the largest independent gas storage owner and operator on the continent, after announcing plans Thursday to develop a new 40 Bcf natural gas storage facility in southeastern Alberta. The Countess development, once completed, is expected to increase EnCana’s Western Canadian gas storage by almost 40%, totaling approximately 135 Bcf. Once Countess is complete, EnCana will own and operate about 180 Bcf of gas storage capacity across North America, with facilities in Alberta, California and Oklahoma.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has determined that Southwest Gas’ failure to store more natural gas or to contract in advance for delivery of natural gas for the winter of 2000-2001 was imprudent. The storage situation in California in winter 2000-2001 was one of the major reasons gas prices at the California border soared to nearly $70/MMBtu.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has determined that Southwest Gas’ failure to store more natural gas or to contract in advance for delivery of natural gas for the winter of 2000-2001 was imprudent. The storage situation in California in winter 2000-2001 was one of the major reasons gas prices at the California border soared to nearly $70/MMBtu.

The rapid transition to a competitive power industry wasresponsible for last summer’s outages and brownouts, and a repeatcould be in store for this year, according to the results of theDepartment of Energy’s (DOE) final report on reliability issues.

Look for NGC to focus its efforts on growing the powergeneration segment of its energy store concept of providing gas,power and gas liquids, CEO Chuck Watson told reporters in HoustonMonday. “We are going to optimize and strategically grow our powergeneration assets. Greater than 50%, probably almost 75%, of ouravailable cash flow in this company over the next several yearswill be in power generation, either greenfield projects, merchantplants, or in possibly acquiring some of these plants that are spunoff from the utilities over the next several years.”