Unconcerned

The turnout was expected to be light at last week’s oil and gas lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico. But producers, apparently unconcerned about the legal wrangling over the lease sale, turned out in large numbers to bid on offshore tracts, making for what the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) called the “best” western GOM sale in nearly a decade in terms of both the number of bids submitted and the amount of money bid.

By last Friday, Sempra Energy’s stock price was clawing its way back upward after dropping nearly 10% earlier in the week on the news that a California state Superior Court judge had rejected the company’s multiple requests for a summary judgment, declaring that a class action lawsuit against Sempra was ready for a jury trial some time next year.

By last Friday, Sempra Energy’s stock price was clawing its way back upward after dropping nearly 10% earlier in the week on the news that a California state Superior Court judge had rejected the company’s multiple requests for a summary judgment, declaring that a class action lawsuit against Sempra was ready for a jury trial some time next year.

The nation’s largest municipal utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), feels secure in being able to avoid any negative impact from Wednesday’s federal decisions on pending California electricity crisis cases, and in hedging against the current and projected volatility in wholesale natural gas prices, according to General Manager David Wiggs in an interview Monday with NGI/Power Market Today.