Testimony

Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) has finished collecting witness testimony about the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project after 11 months of roving arctic hearings, but the regulatory marathon is far from over for the northern pipeline and production proposal.

After four weeks of testimony and two days of deliberation, jurors in the false price reporting trial of two former natural gas traders rendered a hard-fought split verdict that left defense lawyers scratching their heads.

Testimony by the managing price editor for Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) Friday left open to question the prosecutor’s claim that two former natural gas traders succeeded in manipulating natural gas price indexes in 2000 and 2001 by submitting false information to publishers.

In some of the most damaging testimony so far in the trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, David Delainey, who once headed the wholesale gas trading unit, testified Tuesday the company played “fast and loose” with accounting rules, and financial tricks were “standard operating procedure.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced Tuesday he has filed testimony with state regulators prepared by three expert witnesses who together recommend cutting $68.7 million from a $132.4 million natural gas rate increase proposed by Consumers Energy Co.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox filed testimony on Monday in the gas cost recovery (GCR) cases of Michigan’s four major gas utilities, challenging the gas cost increases proposed for this winter. Cox told the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) that Consumers Energy, Michigan Consolidated Gas, Aquila and Semco Energy should delay their commodity cost increases until after the winter heating season and spread them over 12 months rather than only four.

The number was still hot off first press reports of FERC staff testimony before a regulatory judge when the California Attorney General’s Office called for more than the $1.67 billion federal regulatory analysts have calculated is owed by Enron Corp. for its alleged wholesale energy market manipulation during the 2000-2001 western energy crisis. California’s AG thinks it should be $2.8 billion, a spokesperson told western news media.

The number was still hot off first press reports of FERC staff testimony before a regulatory judge when the California Attorney General’s Office called for more than the $1.67 billion federal regulatory analysts have calculated is owed by Enron Corp. for its alleged wholesale energy market manipulation during the 2000-2001 western energy crisis. California’s AG thinks it should be $2.8 billion, a spokesperson told western news media.

Expanding upon its testimony Monday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on dampening price volatility and improving storage surveying methods (see Daily GPI, Jan. 25), AEP’s written comments to the committee went a little further.