Suppliers

With wholesale gas prices for March and April nearly triple what prices were for the same months in 2002, very little can be done to prevent some impact on utility customers. Despite forward purchasing, storage and other risk management practices, Mobile Gas in Alabama said its residential customers still will see a 22% increase in their rates.

Retail choice of power suppliers, a lynch pin of California’s unfulfilled electric industry restructuring, received a renewed boost from California state lawmakers last month with at least two bills submitted in the Assembly aimed at reinvigorating so-called “direct access” options.

In an effort to bring greater certainty to utilities and power suppliers entering into wholesale power contracts, while at the same time hopefully slashing the amount of litigation that has arisen from those contracts, FERC last Wednesday issued a proposed policy statement that would set a standard of review that must be met in order to justify proposed changes to market-based rate contracts for wholesale sales of electric energy by utilities.

Two Trinidad-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters are protesting a rate hike request by Southern LNG for terminaling at its Elba Island import station, saying the request would result in 260% cumulative increases since the project was first proposed. They warned that because of “inefficient high-cost bottlenecks in the gas chain, the United States’ gas market will become less attractive as a destination for LNG supplies.”

Two Trinidad-based LNG exporters are protesting a rate hike request by Southern LNG for terminaling at its Elba Island import station, saying the request would result in 260% cumulative increases since the project was first proposed. They warned that because of “inefficient high-cost bottlenecks in the gas chain, the United States’ gas market will become less attractive as a destination for LNG supplies.”

Given that the high natural gas prices “no longer exist” that prompted FERC to require suppliers to report sales made to the California market, a group of major producers and marketers has asked the Commission to terminate the requirement when it comes up for renewal in January.

Given that the high natural gas prices “no longer exist” that prompted FERC to require suppliers to report their sales to the California market, a group of major producers and marketers has asked the Commission to terminate the requirement when its comes up for renewal in January.

The nation’s largest municipal utility, and one of the public sector bulk power suppliers that has made some money supplying power to the rest of California recently, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is reassessing its natural gas strategy for its fleet of in-state power plants in and around the LA Basin.

Natural-gas suppliers and buyers got what they wanted north of the U.S. border–a truly competitive market in delivery services is at hand, TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. has told the National Energy Board. TransCanada predicts that within five years, two-thirds of its long-distance capacity for 7.5 Bcf/d will be sold the same way as most of the gas in its lines, on short contracts. “The traditional regulatory compact,” which kept the system reliably full on long service contracts, “has been dismantled” by allowing rivals to build new capacity.