Widespread

With conventional natural gas supply from the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and other traditional U.S. basins drying up and widespread liquefied natural gas (LNG) access still a question mark, the GOM ultra-deep shelf play is the wild card that could help to pick up some of the slack in domestic supplies, according to Matthew Anstead, an analyst with Wood Mackenzie.

With conventional natural gas supply from the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and other traditional U.S. basins drying up and widespread liquefied natural gas (LNG) access still a question mark, the GOM ultra-deep shelf play is the wild card that could help to pick up some of the slack in domestic supplies, according to Matthew Anstead, an analyst with Wood Mackenzie.

Asserting that it is seeking to prevent anticompetitive activities, widespread market manipulation and collusion to fix electricity prices, retail electric provider (REP) Utility Choice Electric (UCE) on Thursday said that it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court-Houston Division against TXU, American Electric Power (AEP), APX and Reliant, among other defendants.

Mild weather throughout most of the North American continent continued to work its price-depressing magic Friday, augmented by day-earlier weakness in energy futures and to a lesser extent by the typical slump of industrial load over a weekend.

Canadian natural gas production dropped for the second consecutive year in 2003, confirming widespread industry and government expectations that it will contribute to tight supplies and high prices across North America.

By the weekend, warmer temperatures eased concerns among the Pacific Northwest utilities hit by record demand and thousands of outages in the wake of a freezing Arctic storm that drove through the region at the beginning of the week. In the eastern portion of the state of Washington, a spokesperson for Avista Utilities said Friday the weather was “beautiful,” and the area had avoided the potential fall-out from freezing rain that can ice up power lines causing them to sag or come down from the extra weight as happened in the western portion of the state and Oregon.

Last week’s massive blackout in the Northeast and Canada probably began in northern Ohio, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) has cautiously concluded, but it refused to lay the blame on a single utility. Analysts and investors were quick to assign blame, however, and pointed to FirstEnergy Corp.’s Ohio Edison subsidiary as the instigator.

Not to be outdone by the widespread blackouts experienced in the Northeast, Texas was bracing for what could become Hurricane Erika touching down in Brownsville, TX. At presstime Friday evening, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) expected Tropical Storm Erika to make landfall in South Texas and Northeastern Mexico as a hurricane.

Given its widespread dependence on hydroelectric power, directly and indirectly, the western United States may need a combination of active hedging, demand-response and some version of the federally sponsored standard market design (SMD), according to a report, “The Western Energy Market: Inherent Risk and Market Solutions,” sponsored by a merchant energy association.