Waited

Both of California’s two biggest distributors waited until Friday afternoon to declare high-linepack OFOs for Saturday. After issuing a stringent Stage 3 OFO earlier in the week, Pacific Gas & Electric made the latest one more lenient at Stage 2, with $1/Dth penalties for exceeding a 16% tolerance on positive daily imbalances. Southern California Gas said it will assess Buy-Back charges in accordance with its rules and tariffs to those exceeding a 10% tolerance.

Southern California Gas waited until early Wednesday to declare a high-linepack OFO on the Intraday 1 nominations cycle for Wednesday’s gas day. The OFO was kept in place through at least Thursday. Buy-Back charges in accordance with SoCalGas rules and tariffs will be assessed to customers who deliver more than 110% of their actual gas usage into the distributor’s system on the OFO day.

Pacific Gas & Electric waited until Monday afternoon to issue a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Tuesday that carried penalties of $1/Dth for exceeding an 11% tolerance for positive daily imbalances. The OFO was allowed to lapse Wednesday.

Dozens of journalists from around the country waited in Houston Thursday for ex-Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling to take the stand in his defense. The wait proved long and ultimately, futile. Skilling now is expected to begin his testimony on Monday.

After a two-day, 20-cent price drop to begin the week, thefutures market held its ground Wednesday as traders waited on thesidelines in anticipation of fresh supply and demand news releasedyesterday evening. By virtue of its 0.5-cent advance and higherhigh and lower low, yesterday’s session completed a bullish outsideup day on the daily charts. But despite the positive movement, thespot contract was unable to fill in a key chart gap up to $2.52.

Gordon Shearer, president of Cabot LNG Corp., said he knew if hewaited long enough, liquefied natural gas would have its day in themarketplace. That appears about to happen, at least in New England,where Cabot finds itself positioned to meet growing market demandwith LNG imported from thousands of miles away. At the CambridgeEnergy Research Associates 17th annual executive conference inHouston this week, Shearer enumerated factors growing New Englandgas demand and explained how LNG can economically meet some of thatdemand.