Thursday

Florida Gas Transmission continued an Overage Alert Day notice forits market area (see Daily GPI, July 13)Thursday but tightened the tolerance for negative daily imbalancesfrom 10% to 6%.

California regulators Thursday approved additional participationby the state’s major electric utilities in the California PowerExchange’s new block-forward markets for ancillary and otherservices. Normally just a footnote, the action drew considerableattention by the California Public Utilities Commission’s fivegovernor-appointed members in light of the recent power crunch inthe state.

The meltdown occurred as expected Thursday in the cash market.Few points escaped with declines of less than 20 cents, with thegreatest losses of around 40 cents at the linepack-saturatedNorthern California points of Malin and the PG&E citygate,where the utility declared a systemwide OFO for today (seeTransportation Notes).

After testing, but not breaching stubborn resistance at $4.60Thursday, natural gas futures tumbled lower Friday as traderselected to take profits ahead of the weekend. The near-month Julycontract was hit with two distinct selling waves during the firsthour of trading Friday, setting the tone for a session in which thecontract slipped 10.3 cents to finish at $4.448.

Florida Gas Transmission said Thursday’s line break in its 22-inchmainline in Brazoria County south of Houston (see Daily GPI, June 23) had been repaired Friday morningand nominations at upstream receipt points had resumed with that day’sIntraday 1 cycle. Also, FGT lifted Friday an Overage Alert Day noticefor its market area.

Wednesday’s cash market gains got even bigger Thursday asfutures continued to lend support. Virtually all gains were about aquarter or more, with the larger ones of more than 30 centsclustered mainly in the West. Malin led the pack by advancingslightly more than 40 cents.

Futures succumbed to another major technical correctionyesterday as the July contract gapped 2.5 cents lower at the openand dropped a dime early on before plummeting after the AGA gasstorage report came out at 2 p.m. At the end of the regular tradingsession, July was down 34.9 cents, August had dropped 35.1 centsand September was off 33.1 cents. The July contract had a 39-centrange for the day, trading as high as $4.335 and as low as $3.930.

Florida Gas Transmission lifted an Overage Alert Day Noticeaffecting its market area (see Daily GPI, May 4) for Thursday’s gas day, but warnedit will continue monitoring hourly and daily takes to ensure thatsystem integrity is maintained.

The Florida Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to thedevelopment of merchant power in the state in a 6-1 decision issuedThursday, reversing the state Public Service Commission’sauthorization for Duke Energy’s construction of a 514 MW powerplant at New Smyrna Beach.