Supply

Decisions that could affect the continued supply of power toCalifornia consumers and the price of that power could be renderedthis week in separate cases in federal courts in Los Angeles andSacramento.

Meeting in a special session last week, California’s regulatorsgave PG&E’s utility authority to amend its gas supply deals tokeep supplies flowing to the state past Tuesday when the currentfederal DOE emergency order expires. But regulators postponedaction on another PG&E request that Southern California Gas Co.over its strong protests be compelled to provide emergency suppliesto PG&E’s gas utility residential and small business customers.That issue is scheduled to come up Thursday when the regulatorsreconvene.

At 2 p.m. (PST) Monday, the Cal-ISO anticipated California wouldavoid rolling blackouts and have only some business interruptionsin northern California to get around the transmission bottleneckfor moving supplies south to north. The prognosis for Tuesday ispretty much as it was yesterday, said Cal-ISO’s COO KellanFluckiger, noting that they do not anticipate any unplannedoutages, which is always the wildcard in transmission gridmanagement in the midst of shortages of the magnitude thatCalifornia has faced for the past two months.

Allegheny Technologies Inc. and DukeSolutions signed acomprehensive energy alliance agreement yesterday for long-termenergy supply and demand management. Under terms of the contract,DukeSolutions will help ATI implement company-wide initiatives toreduce domestic energy costs in 12 states.

A key ingredient in reformulated gasoline, methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, may soon be in short supply because of the rising price of natural gas. Friday, independent Valero Refining Corp. said it has cut its MTBE production 7,000 bbl/d from its only production plant because of the high costs.

Chemical companies, forced to shut in operations because of high natural gas prices, are nevertheless making money — by selling gas futures contracts. Terra Industries and Mississippi Chemical Corp. became the latest companies to announce cutbacks and shutdowns related to current natural gas costs.

With today’s electricity demand expanding beyond the reach ofavailable supply, and nationwide electric deregulation effortsproviding inconsistent results, distributed power just may be thenext big thing, according to Bear Stearns analyst Robert Winters.

With today’s electricity demand expanding beyond the reach ofavailable supply, and nationwide electric deregulation effortsproviding inconsistent results, distributed power just may be thenext big thing, according to Bear Stearns analyst Robert Winters.

In the midst of a real potential cold weather energy/supplycrisis hovering over the state, the California Energy CommissionWednesday approved a new 500 MW natural gas-fired electricgeneration plant that could help head off shortages in 2002 and twopeaking plants totaling 371 MW that should be online by theupcoming summer of 2001.