Tossing

In tossing aside a major segment in its aggressive strategy to become the nation’s largest independent producer of gas-fired power generation, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. raised questions about how it will fill the fuel gap for its 27,000 MW portfolio. A heavier reliance on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports may be part of the company’s redesigned future, a Calpine spokesperson told NGI.

Tossing aside the need for investment-grade credit, NRG Corp.’s new CEO, David Crane, told a financial audience Tuesday that his company is poised to become the first real success story in the merchant generation sector. He called NRG the “anti-Calpine” in remarks at the Lehman Brothers’ 2004 High-Yield Bond Syndicated Loan Conference in Orlando, FL.

Tossing aside arguments by an Arizona regulatory commission representative who came to San Francisco to articulate his state’s case, California regulators Thursday unanimously agreed to adopt proposed rules for mandating that the state’s major gas and electric utilities bid to keep up to 725 MMcf/d of firm capacity on El Paso Natural Gas serving the state to prevent it from being shifted to neighboring Arizona.

Tossing aside criticism that California’s new-found reliance onlong-term power contracts may over time cost consumers billions ofdollars extra for electricity, the state’s chief negotiatorThursday defended his work, arguing no one can predict where powerprices will be five and 10 years from now.

Tossing aside its “tortuous” modified primary function methodfor deciding the jurisdiction of offshore pipelines, FERC last weekissued a long-awaited final rule that’s designed to bring”symmetry” to the regulation of natural gas pipelines on the OuterContinental Shelf (OCS) by imposing similar reporting burdens onall facilities.

Tossing aside its “tortuous” modified primary function methodfor deciding the jurisdiction of offshore pipelines, FERC yesterdayissued a long-awaited final rule that’s designed to bring”symmetry” to the regulation of natural gas pipelines on the OuterContinental Shelf (OCS) by imposing similar reporting burdens onall facilities.

Tossing aside an ongoing state regulatory investigation of someof its billing practices, California’s most aggressive independentenergy service provider (ESP), Commonwealth Energy, plans to moveinto Pennsylvania and New Jersey next month where it expects a morestraightforward and receptive marketplace for its residential andsmall business electricity products. While signing up more than60,000 customers in California’s daunting retail mass power marketsso far, Commonwealth has been able to pass on savings of up to fivepercent, emphasizing green power from environmentally benignsources, developing prospects for new green products and shoppingfor power generation operations of its own, in addition to eyeingother states as the next stage of its two-year-old development.