Yesterday

As was expected, FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner Jr. yesterday refused to appoint a judge to oversee negotiations of a money settlement in the high-profile dispute in which two El Paso Corp. affiliates are accused of illegally rigging bids for pipeline capacity and violating the Commission’s affiliate standards. He said the parties have three weeks to settle the dispute on their own.

The New York Mercantile Exchange decided not to have an abbreviated Access trading session yesterday, but will attempt to schedule a session on Friday for all contracts currently listed on Nymex Access. The exchange previously had said it would work toward having a two-hour session Thursday afternoon.

Prices went another few cents higher for no apparent reason yesterday. Most of Thursday’s advances ranged from a couple of cents to about a dime, but Malin, intra-Alberta and several Rockies/Pacific Northwest points tended to see larger upticks.

After checking higher yesterday morning, natural gas futures made another push to the upside early in the afternoon as traders digested the latest natural gas storage supply data. The October contract received the biggest boost, shuffling 6.1 cents higher to close at $2.420.

FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner Jr. yesterday “strongly encourage[d]” parties to reach a monetary settlement in the high-profile case in which California regulators have accused El Paso Natural Gas and El Paso Merchant Energy Co. (EPME) of illegally manipulating natural gas prices in California and committing affiliate violations.

The White House publicly confirmed yesterday what has been rumored for months — that Commissioner Pat Wood III will be the next chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

El Paso said a compressor maintenance outage of its Leupp Station, previously scheduled for yesterday, has been postponed until further notice.

FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis L. Wagner stunned his courtroom yesterday when he abruptly adjourned the affiliate-abuse phase of the hearing exploring charges against El Paso Natural Gas and affiliate El Paso Merchant Energy after the company refused to put El Paso Corp. Chairman William Wise and other top corporate executives on the stand to respond to questions from Wagner.

Defying the predictions of political pundits, the Republican-led House yesterday passed landmark energy legislation that gives small producers multi-billion dollar tax breaks and lays the foundation for oil and natural gas exploration and production to begin in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) within the next decade. The House bill was a major victory for President Bush, who has backed drilling in ANWR as part of his national energy policy.