Supports

If the controversial price supports for Alaska gas production fail to make it into the broad energy bill being negotiated, “there will be nothing of significance in the bill that addresses the supply-demand needs” of natural gas customers in the United States, said an official for Alaska producer ConocoPhillips Thursday.

In a rare show of unanimity, the five members of the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) agreed on two different natural gas requests from Sempra Energy’s two utilities — Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas and Electric Co. (SDG&E). One action clarifies an inherited supply contract tied to a state bulk power contract, and the other item opens the utilities’ gas distribution pipes to cable/telecom operators.

In a rare show of unanimity, California’s five energy regulators agreed on two different natural gas requests from Sempra Energy’s two utilities — Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas and Electric Co.

The Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) said it fully supports the concept of a “safe harbor” that would legally protect energy companies who make unintentional, “non-criminal errors” when reporting prices on natural gas and power trades to publishers of price indexes, noting it would pave the way for greater industry participation in the indexes.

Buoyed mostly by storage demand, modest firmness continued to dominate eastern markets Tuesday, although a few points were flat and only Transco Zone 6 non-New York managed a gain of more than about a dime. Softness reigned in most of the West, which not coincidentally is the only region that was not drawing down storage in the last two Energy Information Administration reports.

Natural gas markets across North America last week were warned for the second time this heating season against taking for granted any further growth in Canadian gas supplies, for most of this decade. The Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) said its latest industry survey will confirm a report by the National Energy Board (NEB) in December that gas field productivity has peaked and stands poised to drop in western Canada (see NGI, Jan. 13; Jan. 20).

Natural gas markets across North America this week were warned for the second time this heating season against taking for granted any further growth in Canadian gas supplies, at least for most of this decade. The Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) said its latest industry survey will confirm a report by the National Energy Board in December that gas field productivity has peaked and stands poised to drop in western Canada (see Daily GPI, Jan. 13; Jan. 21).

Having characterized the nation’s major energy firms as “failing miserably” to deliver promised increased cash flows from merchant energy businesses, most of the private-sector energy companies were blistered last Thursday by critical Standard & Poor’s analysts who conducted a conference call on the global utilities/energy merchant sector. The same firms with aggressive diversification plans five years ago, today for the most part, are “desperately trying to unwind” those businesses in response to a severe liquidity and capital crisis, triggered by the plunge in their stock prices, the analysts said.

While he strongly supports a money settlement between parties in the high profile case alleging affiliate and market-power abuse on the part of El Paso Corp. subsidiaries, FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner Jr. indicated that he won’t postpone issuing his initial decision to accommodate settlement negotiations. Assuming a settlement is not brokered, Wagner said he “feels strongly that this case should proceed to decision at the very earliest possible date.”