Wildfire

Reacting to consecutive years of devastating wildfires, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has rolled out an expanded program to decrease threats and support rebuilding in the Camp Fire area of Northern California, including the destroyed town of Paradise.

A wildfire along the Western Slope in Colorado south of Rangely in the Piceance Basin prompted Denver-based Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. to close 500 conventional natural gas wells in Rio Blanco County and evacuate an eight-worker plant. The shutdown was expected to continue at least through Friday, a Colorado-based Encana spokesperson told NGI.

The Wallow wildfire in eastern Arizona’s White Mountains on Wednesday was threatening energy facilities operated by UniSource Energy Corp.’s Tucson Electric Power (TEP) utility, but a utility spokesperson told NGI there was no immediate danger and outages so far had been avoided. Expanding at four to five miles daily, the fire has cut across 311,000 acres of dense pine forests running near TEP’s north-south transmission power lines and coal-fired generation complex at Springerville, AZ. Under threat are the two power lines that carry 1,100 MW of power from Springerville and San Juan Generating Stations into the greater Tucson area. If the fire came close enough to the power lines to shut them down, TEP can bring on additional local generation and coordinate with other utilities to avoid outages, a spokesperson said.

After rumors that Nymex Holdings was on the “for sale” block spread like wildfire earlier this month (see NGI, June 18), speculators honed in on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)/Euronext, Deutsche Boerse and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) as the shortlist of potential suitors. While Nymex’s stock climbed 6% on the June 15 rumors to close at $142.12 on that day, the publicity from the news reports wasn’t welcomed by all parties.

After rumors that Nymex Holdings was on the “for sale” block spread like wildfire on Friday (see Daily GPI, June 18), speculators honed in on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)/Euronext, Deutsche Boerse and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) as the shortlist of potential suitors. While Nymex’s stock climbed 6% Friday to close at $142.12, the publicity from the news reports wasn’t welcomed by all parties.