Target

After having a customer-specific OFO in effect for Wednesdayonly, Pacific Gas & Electric issued a new customer-specific OFOfor Saturday and was projecting above-target linepack Saturdaythrough today. An unplanned outage prompted Transwestern toallocate San Juan Lateral volumes for the Intraday 1 cycle Friday,affecting 18 points.

Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. Inc. initiated coverage ofHS Resources with a “buy” rating and a 12-month price target of $30based on expectations for strong summer gas prices. In a 16-pageresearch report, FBR senior research analyst David Khani identifiedHS as the dominant oil and gas producer in the Denver-Julesberg(D-J) Basin.

After trading up to, but not through, stubborn resistanceMonday, natural gas futures eased yesterday as fund tradersliquidated a portion of their long positions amid bearish technicalconditions and ahead of warming temperatures expected in theNortheast U.S later this week.

SCANA Energy and affiliate Powertel, Inc., one of the largestwireless PCS telecommunications providers in the Southeast,announced plans to jointly market their services at 30 kiosklocations in Kroger grocery stores in Greater Atlanta, Macon,Augusta and Savannah beginning today. Powertel will provide thepersonnel for the kiosks locations, which were built and installedby SCANA. Customers will soon be able to sign up for Powertel andSCANA services, make bill payments and receive information on otherservices while shopping at Kroger.

A Nov. 1 target went by without a start on deliveries to thenortheastern United States by the new Maritimes & NortheastPipeline (M&NP), but it says there is no real delay and thetiming has nothing to do with a last-minute tangle with Indiansbefore the National Energy Board.

Sunoco Inc. and FPL Group’s FPL Energy announced an agreementyesterday to build a 725 MW gas-fired combined cycle power plant atSunoco’s refinery in Marcus Hook, PA. The two companies said theyintend to gain all necessary approvals by the third quarter andstart construction in late 2000. While the refinery will consumethe plant’s steam, all the generation will be sold into thePennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) market.

Enron and Peoples Energy put their Chicago market muscletogether last week in a wholesale services partnership and energyasset optimization package that likely will impact the Midwestmarket for years to come. With the help of Enron, Peoples will beefup its Chicago gas infrastructure and secure about two thirds ofits gas supply requirements for the next five years.

Western Canadian gas is poised to play a larger role in the U.S.supply picture at a time when gas-directed drilling activity hasfar surpassed oil activity in the region, according to the CanadianEnergy Research Institute (CERI).

Western Canadian gas is poised to play a larger role in the U.S.supply picture at a time when gas-directed drilling activity hasfar surpassed oil activity in the region, according to the CanadianEnergy Research Institute (CERI).