Today

Reiterating his company’s “back-to-basics” strategy, which has become a staple of most energy companies in today’s current marketplace, CMS Energy Corp. President David W. Joos said that through asset sales his company has become closer to being “safer, smaller and stronger.”

Reiterating his company’s “back-to-basics” strategy, which has become a staple of most energy companies in today’s current marketplace, CMS Energy Corp. President David W. Joos said that through asset sales his company has become closer to being “safer, smaller and stronger.”

In a story that ran in today’s Daily Gas Price Index. It was incorrectly stated that FERC informed El Paso Natural Gas this week that it should have a written agreement governing money pool arrangements with its parent company. The story should have said that although El Paso Natural Gas already does have a written agreement with its parent related to its cash management program, the agreement is outdated and does not identify the current name of the parent company. FERC Chief Accountant John Delaware also told the pipeline company that it should update its cash management agreement to include missing information, such as the duties and responsibilities of both the pipeline and its parent company, the specific interest rate, when the interest is to be paid and the method for calculating and allocating expenses (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12).

Inconsistent federal policies of encouraging natural gas use for environmental purposes and then restricting access to gas reserves are part of today’s disconnect in supply and demand, which has led to the shut-down of manufacturing plants that can’t pay the high prices, Lee Gooch, head of the Process Gas Consumers (PGC), said earlier this week.

The biggest issue in natural gas price reporting today is the lack of liquidity, or low level of fixed price trading in the monthly market due mainly to the loss of the middleman marketers, price survey publishers told attendees at GasMart/Power 2003 Wednesday.

The biggest issue in natural gas price reporting today is the lack of liquidity, or low level of fixed price trading in the monthly market due mainly to the loss of the middleman marketers, price survey publishers told attendees at GasMart/Power 2003 Wednesday.

Progress Energy announced today that a subsidiary has entered into three independent transactions to acquire approximately 162 producing natural gas wells with proven reserves of 195 Bcf for $148 million.

The energy merchant business may be a much smaller universe today, but Mirant has no plans to pull out of the sector, CEO Marce Fuller said Friday.

After chopping its power marketing staff in half this summer (see Power Market Today, June 24), Boise-based IDACORP Inc. on Tuesday decided to throw in the towel on natural gas marketing. The company also said it will terminate efforts to pursue a midstream natural gas development business. It will exit natural gas trading operations by the end of the first quarter of 2003, affecting a small Houston staff.