Wholesale

Sempra Energy Trading, the wholesale commodity trading arm of San Diego, CA-based Sempra Energy, announced last week that it inked a deal to buy New York-based Enron Metals & Commodity Corp. for $43.5 million in cash. Acquisition of the Enron company, a leading global trader of copper, lead and zinc concentrates, is subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

With FERC-ordered mitigation measures on wholesale power prices in the western part of the country set to expire later this year, Commission Chairman Pat Wood on Thursday disclosed that he’s traveling to California this week to, among other things, receive assurances that the region’s market rules and infrastructure are on enough of a solid footing that those caps can be lifted when they expire at the end of September.

FERC staff concluded in a report to Congress last week that the Commission’s wholesale price caps during the last half of 2001 in the western power market had little or no economic impact because prices of surplus power resold by utilities in the spot market on average were only $35/MWh compared to the cap at $92/MWh.

The natural gas and power wholesale market braced for the first day of December deliveries late Friday, uncertain how much gas would flow and how much would be affected by the collapse of Enron and its EnronOnline electronic trading system, the dominant electronic energy exchange in the industry until last week. EnronOnline was up and running in an extremely limited fashion Thursday and Friday, after going dark Wednesday.

The natural gas and power wholesale market braced for the first day of December deliveries, uncertain of how much of their gas would flow and how much would be affected by the collapse of Enron and its two-year old EnronOnline, which had been the dominant electronic trading system. EnronOnline was back up and running in an extremely limited fashion Thursday, after going dark Wednesday.

Reliant Energy Wholesale Group unveiled a new natural gas index and associated financial risk management instrument, designed to enable natural gas traders to better hedge risk for their companies and portfolio clients during the heating season. The Weather-Sensitive Gas Load Index (WGLI) measures current and forecasted residential and commercial natural gas consumption. To work with the index, Reliant has developed a financial instrument tailored for gas traders, called the WGLI Swap.

With wholesale gas costs plummeting, Dominion East Ohio Gas said its customers will pay 25% less for gas in November, December and January than they paid during the same months a year earlier. Under a gas cost recovery (GCR) decrease filed last Wednesday with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Dominion East Ohio sales customers, starting Oct. 26, will pay $5.38/Mcf, down 12.8% from the current $6.17/Mcf and down 25% from the $7.18/Mcf they paid during the third quarter last year.

With wholesale gas costs plummeting, Dominion East Ohio Gas said its customers will pay 25% less for natural gas in November, December and January than they paid during the same months a year earlier. Under a gas cost recovery (GCR) decrease filed on Wednesday with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Dominion East Ohio sales customers, starting Oct. 26, will pay $5.38/Mcf, down 12.8% from the current $6.17/Mcf and down 25% from the $7.18/Mcf they paid during the third quarter last year.

Continuing along its chosen path of focusing on its wholesale and energy risk management businesses, Kansas City, MO-based Aquila Inc. said on Monday that it has sold the retail energy manager services business of UtiliCorp Energy Solutions to Energy Management Resources Inc., a nationwide provider of energy supply management services to commercial and industrial customers throughout the United States.