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Canada’s Far North was the scene Friday (Sept. 10) of anatural-gas industry version of the small step for man but giantleap for mankind on the moon 30 years ago.

Canada’s Far North was the scene Friday (Sept. 10) of anatural-gas industry version of the small step for man but giantleap for mankind on the moon 30 years ago.

The draft version of Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) much-anticipatedretail electric legislation that was unveiled last week appears tobe most notable for the two things that were missing from it – arenewable-fuel mandate and a date-certain.

Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) launched its newestversion of GasSelect, an automated gas scheduling and energymanagement system. The e-commerce application is available tosubscribers through www.gasselect.com for real-time submission ofgas nominations, trading gas delivery imbalances in a secondarymarket, and for gas consumption information from electronic metersinstalled at customer sites. GasSelect is used to manage thedelivery of 1 Tcf into Southern California for both SoCalGas andSan Diego Gas & Electric.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline filed a significantly scaled-down versionof its Eastern Express Project 2000 last week, reporting thateastern markets have been slow to develop and many New Englandpower generators believe it would be premature to sign long-termcontracts for firm gas transportation. The pipeline’s applicationwith FERC calls for the addition of only 168 MMcf/d of capacityalong the northernmost part of its system at a connection with theJoint Facilities of the PNGTS and Maritimes &amp Northeastpipelines.

The cash market started out this week looking remarkably similarto the way it did last week, but on a reduced scale. Because pricesweren’t digging out from nearly as deep a weekend hole as the oneof Dec. 5-7, Monday’s increases weren’t quite as spectacular asthose from the previous week but were still significantnonetheless.

Great Lakes Gas Transmission filed a large but downsized versionof its original 1999-2000 expansion project with FERC last Fridayon behalf of a single shipper, TransCanada PipeLines. The projectis expected to cost $620 million and begin operating in November2000. The Great Lakes 300 Expansion will involve the addition of260 miles of 36-inch diameter pipeline loops, including a newunderwater crossing of the Straits of Mackinac, and seven newcompressors adding 180,000 hp of compression. Great Lakes’ systemcurrently transports about 2 Bcf/d of Canadian gas from Emerson,MB, through Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.