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The board of directors of New York Mercantile Exchange Inc., (NYMEX) last week voted to elect J. Robert (Bo) Collins Jr. as president. Collins, until now the senior vice president of natural gas trading at El Paso Merchant Energy, has been serving on the NYMEX board since March as a trade representative. Before joining El Paso in 1997, Collins was a natural gas and crude options market maker with Pioneer Futures on the floor of the Exchange.

El Paso declared an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty situation Saturday. It was still in effect Monday until further notice.

A producer group and aboriginal leaders from Canada’s Northwest Territories failed to reach a deal last week giving the native peoples a one-third stake in the proposed Mackenzie Delta pipeline after some native leaders said they wanted more time. Optimism remained high that an agreement could be reached in the next few months, and both sides stressed that the deal isn’t dead, just postponed.

A producer group and aboriginal leaders from Canada’s Northwest Territories failed to reach a deal this week giving the native peoples a one-third stake in the proposed Mackenzie Delta pipeline after some native leaders said they wanted more time. Optimism remained high that an agreement could be reached in the next few months, and both sides stressed that the deal isn’t dead, just postponed.

In a merger that would create the second largest refiner of petroleum products in the United States behind ExxonMobil Corp., San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. and Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. (UDS) announced last week that they have entered into an agreement in which Valero will acquire UDS in a transaction valued at $6 billion.

Tennessee issued a systemwide OFO Balancing Alert that was to take effect until further notice Saturday, saying it was experiencing high system linepack “due to overproduction, reduced demand and limited storage injection capacity.” The OFO requires customers under Rate Schedules LMS-MA and LMS-PA (including SAs) to keep actual daily deliveries into the system less than or equal to scheduled quantities plus 2% (or 500 dekatherms, whichever is greater) and actual daily takes out of the system greater than or equal to scheduled quantities minus 2% (or 500 dekatherms, whichever is greater). Customers will be charged $15 plus the applicable Regional Daily Spot Price for each dekatherm of gas outside of the designated tolerance, Tennessee said. Penalties will not apply to underdeliveries into the system or overtakes out of the system.

Citing a gas quality problem, NGPL has quit scheduling nominations at the Oneok/Westar-Wheeler receipt point in Wheeler County, TX until further notice.

If you think the power crisis this winter has been bad, waituntil the summer peak. California Independent System Operator CEOTerry Winter made a shocking presentation to the newgovernor-appointed ISO board recently, revealing the likelihood ofa massive 6,815 MW shortfall of power supply by June.

El Paso declared an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty situationFriday that was to remain in effect until further notice.