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With electricity price shock still very much on their minds,California’s three major investor-owned gas utilities are alreadygearing up for potential similar shock surrounding natural gasbills this winter as gas futures prices are hovering twice as highas they were a year ago. Wednesday natural gas futures hit anotherall-time high, topping $5.

With electricity price shock still very much on their minds, California’s three major investor-owned gas utilities are already gearing up for potential similar shock surrounding natural gas bills this winter as gas futures prices are hovering twice as high as they were a year ago. Wednesday natural gas futures hit another all-time high, topping $5.

Pacific Gas & Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 low-inventory OFO effective today. It has a very stringent tolerance of 1% for negative daily imbalances and penalties of $1/Dth.

How low can you go? Some traders likely were asking themselvesthat very question Wednesday afternoon after seeing cash pricescrater by about 20 cents or more at nearly all points that morningand then watching the screen go into a swoon immediately after theAGA storage report, which means the cash market is expected toregister big losses again today.

TransCanada PipeLines has taken the first steps in a bold planto divest $3 billion in assets in its Canadian midstream,international and refined products transportation businesses. Thecompany sold subsidiary NovaGas Canada LP’s Provost gas plant andgathering system to a subsidiary of Midcoast Energy Resources Inc.last week for an undisclosed sum and completed the sale of its PeshCreek processing complex and East Australia pipeline system earlierthis month. The total value of the two Canadian processing planttransactions comes to about $42 million.

Mississippi River Transmission (MRT) and Columbia Gas SystemInc. got very high marks for being responsive to their customers,according to the results of the latest pipelinecustomer-satisfaction study released last week by Mastio & Co.

The cash market finally caved in Friday under the weight of verylittle heating demand and abundant available supplies, sendingprices lower for the first time in the fledgling March aftermarket.

Year 2000 could very well be the year of the fuel cell on WallStreet as next year is expected to see the first commercializationof the technology on Main Street. While most consumers have yet tohear of the systems that could one day be big, gas-poweredbatteries in their backyards, investors certainly are aware.

“1999 was a very good year for Vastar,” according to VastarResources President Charles D. Davidson, who had the numbers toback up the boast: a 56% increase in earnings over 1998, along witha 170% replacement of reserves.