Telling

There could be more than one way to build a Canadian northern pipeline, a young company with a long pedigree in the field is telling investors and the National Energy Board (NEB).

The Nova Scotian government gave EnCana Corp. the brush off late Thursday, telling the energy giant it does not want to pay any of the costs for a proposed pipeline to carry natural gas from EnCana’s on-and-off-again offshore Deep Panuke project. EnCana had offered the province the opportunity to take an ownership stake. The offer was required under Canadian law.

The Nova Scotian government gave EnCana Corp. the brush off late Thursday, telling the energy giant it does not want to pay any of the costs for a proposed pipeline to carry natural gas from EnCana’s on-and-off-again offshore Deep Panuke project. EnCana had offered the province the opportunity to take an ownership stake. The offer was required under Canadian law.

Successful natural gas futures trading often depends on correctly determining what “story” the market is telling on a particular day, according to Sandy “Trot” Goldfarb, a 20-plus-year trading veteran. Speaking at NGI’s Natural Gas Futures Prices Workshop at the New York Mercantile Exchange last week, Trot said the plot of recent price movements indicates that there could be more room to the upside in this market.

The he-said, he-said battle for the control of El Paso Corp.’s board of directors continued on Thursday, with El Paso telling shareholders to look at its recent accomplishments and vision for the future as it votes its proxy for the June 17 annual meeting. The statements followed an investor conference on Wednesday by opponents who are attempting to oust the board (see Daily GPI, June 5).

Accenture’s Etienne H. Deffarges on Thursday borrowed a quotation attributed to Winston Churchill, telling energy executives that the definition of “failure” was the “ability to go from one failure to another with enthusiasm.” Churchill’s comment, said Deffarges, “spectacularly” defines what has happened and what will happen as the power sector begins its slow ascent.

Stakeholders are telling the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) that if adequate transmission were in place in the heartland, new developments of both coal-fired and wind-powered generation would occur, but for now there is insufficient transmission to keep up with new generating plants coming online in the region, a top official with MISO said last Wednesday.

There’s no telling what the ultimate fate of PG&E Corp.’s bold move to move major assets out of its state-regulated utility operations as part of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan will be, but major merchant generator/marketers are sitting comfortably with assurances they will recover up to almost $1 billion in unpaid wholesale power bills, regardless of what the bankruptcy judge decides.

In what could be a telling sign for making permanent a similar program for natural gas royalties, the Minerals Management Service reports that its crude oil royalty-in-kind (RIK) pilot program in Wyoming has successfully demonstrated that taking production in kind is a “viable alternative” to the traditional method of collecting royalties, in some circumstances.