Wholesale

Proposed “firm access rights” (FAR) for wholesale gas customers on the Sempra Energy utilities’ natural gas transmission and storage system is far from perfect, according to critics, particularly those planning to import regasified LNG into the California market.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), a major purchaser of wholesale natural gas supplies in the West, is still considering taking the lion’s share of a massive 20-year gas supply pre-pay deal that a consortium of public sector utilities in Southern California hopes to have Goldman Sachs structure for them, according to a LADWP executive.

The nation’s largest municipal utility and a major purchaser of wholesale natural gas supplies in the West, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), is still considering taking the lion’s share of a massive 20-year gas supply pre-pay deal that a consortium of public sector utilities in Southern California hopes to have Goldman Sachs structure for them, according to a LADWP executive who talked with NGI Wednesday.

In a Wholesale Power Market Update issued last week, Fitch Ratings said that over the next 12 months, natural gas prices will remain volatile, fluctuating between $6 and $10/MMBtu. Longer-term, Fitch expects gas prices to average between $5-6/MMBtu.

In a move that essentially keeps all of the major energy suppliers in California during the wholesale market meltdown in 2000-2001 at risk in pending litigation, California Superior Court Judge Ronald Prager in San Diego County ruled Tuesday against Dallas-based TXU Corp.’s contention that it should not be included in a series of 27 civil cases that have been consolidated in the judge’s court. Prager oversaw the multi-billion-dollar class action lawsuit against Sempra Energy and its two California natural gas utilities that was settled earlier in the year in the midst of a jury trial.

In an offshoot of the court-approved class action litigation settlement over Sempra Energy’s utilities’ alleged driving up of wholesale natural gas prices in the midst of the 2000-2001 energy crisis, the utilities and neighboring Southern California Edison Co. have reached a settlement that calls for changes in the way the Sempra gas storage program is operated. The three utilities jointly filed a motion with the California Public Utilities Commission last Monday to stay a regulatory case examining storage operations.

The Missouri Public Service Commission (MoPSC) has filed comments questioning Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line’s “wholesale replacement” of 71 mainline compressors with 15 new ones — while keeping the same overall horsepower of 118,720 — at a cost $192 million (CP06-272).

National Grid and KeySpan Corp. submitted their merger plan to FERC on Thursday, promising no adverse impacts on the wholesale energy market nor any cross subsidization from regulated to unregulated operations from the $7.3 billion combination, which would create the third largest gas and electric utility company in the United States.

Reflecting higher wholesale costs for fuel over the past 12 months and estimates of what the future holds, Sierra Pacific Power Co. Monday made its annual mandatory natural gas deferred-energy filing with the Nevada Public Utilities Commission, seeking a 10% boost in retail gas rates, effective Dec. 1. The Sierra Pacific Resources’ Reno-based utility said the filing reflects the “continuing high energy costs around the country.”