Temporarily

More gas processing plants are temporarily shutting their doorsthis month, a fallout from higher natural gas prices. The usuallymore expensive gas liquids now cost less than the raw natural gas,and buyers looking for propane, butane, isobutane and chemicalfeedstocks may have to look a little longer and spend a little morethan they did a month ago.

More gas processing plants are temporarily shutting their doorsthis month, a fallout from higher natural gas prices. The usuallymore expensive gas liquids now cost less than the raw natural gas,and buyers looking for propane, butane, isobutane and chemicalfeedstocks may have to look a little longer and spend a little morethan they did a month ago.

The cash market appears to have decided to take it easy at leasttemporarily. Tuesday’s activity remained relatively subdued, andfew points strayed much further than 2-3 cents to either side offlat.

An attempt to slow development of merchant power plants inFlorida has been derailed, at least temporarily, but independentpower in the sunshine state still faces some governmental hurdles.

Faced with the possibility of loosing its electric marketinglicense in New Jersey because of seedy marketing maneuvers,Sempra’s Energy America cut a deal with the state’s Board of PublicUtilities last week, agreeing to halt its marketing efforts for athree-week span, retrain its agents and stop all “unconscionablemarketing tactics.”

An IBM Internet outage that affected many western and Canadiancustomers last week temporarily cut off access to Altrade’selectronic gas trading system Thursday afternoon costing thecompany and its customers at least 5 Bcf/d in trading volume duringa peak bidweek trading period.

An IBM Internet outage that affected many western and Canadiancustomers last week temporarily cut off access to Altrade’selectronic gas trading system Thursday afternoon costing thecompany and its customers at least 5 Bcf/d in trading volume duringa peak bidweek trading period.

Conceding defeat – at least temporarily – North AtlanticPipeline Partners withdrew from FERC its application to build amassive 575-mile subsea pipeline system to carry initially 2 Bcf/dof gas from the Scotian Shelf offshore Nova Scotia to markets inAtlantic Canada and New England.