Daily GPI

Columbia Gulf said it has limited delivery capacity at the Columbia Gas interconnects at Leach, KY. As of Saturday it expected to be able to deliver only 1,825,000 Dth/d at the location. “Since this scheduling location represents multiple physical delivery meters, the quantity scheduled each day may vary based on actual market demand…and other operating conditions,” Columbia Gulf said. The constraint is related to a pipe replacement project near the interconnects. Columbia Gulf expects it will take three weeks to complete the work.

Larger declines in the West led a parade of falling weekend prices Friday. Most of the non-western downturn was in the teens, although a few Midcontinent points near the market area fell a little more than 20 cents. Sumas and the Permian Basin were almost alone in the West by dropping a quarter or so; other regional points were down by about 35 cents or more, led by a San Juan-Blanco plunge of more than 80 cents.

Stemming a three-day, 30-cent price erosion, natural gas futures rebounded modestly Friday, as scale-down buying lifted the market higher on expiration day. With that the May contract drifted off the board at $3.319, up 2.4 cents for the session but down 5.5 cents from the level from which it began its tenure as prompt month. By comparison, the April contract expired at $3.472, up a whopping $1.083 during its reign as spot contract at Nymex. At 132,266 estimated volume, Friday was not especially high for an expiration day, suggesting that traders elected to finish much of their business earlier in the week.

While Wall Street analysts and ratings agencies with post-Enron jitters were coming down hard on Dynegy Friday, traders in the market brushed aside the latest ratings changes, saying they had no problems with the veteran marketing company as a counterparty.

The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission turned a deaf ear Thursday to the bulk of the energy industry’s concerns about the expansive definition of “energy affiliate” as it applies in the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) on standards of conduct governing the relationships between regulated transmission monopolies and their affiliates..

So much for the halcyon days when convergence in the face of growing deregulation was all the rage in the utility industry. Those go-go times of only a few years ago have been replaced with a decided sour outlook, according to Standard & Poor’s latest “Report Card on U.S. Utilities (electric, gas and water)” released last Thursday.

FERC staff has given draft environmental clearance for East Tennessee Natural Gas’ $289 million Patriot expansion and extension project to serve new power generation and traditional natural gas demand in the Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina markets.

FERC has given Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line the green light to start service May 1 through its $134 million Sundance expansion project, which was approved in March 2001. The looping and compression project will provide an additional 236,383 Dth/d of firm transportation capacity to 12 shippers in the Southeast.

Most of the cash market experienced relatively minor weakness Thursday with prices ranging from flat to about a dime lower. The bottom was falling out in the Rockies (and to a lesser degree in San Juan Basin), however. Even with some snow showers occurring in mountainous areas from Wyoming to the Pacific Northwest, Rockies gas continued to succumb to slipping demand and transportation/storage constraints.