Daily GPI

A Washington, DC, attorney representing Enron Corp. furnished the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Monday with three memoranda documents disclosing strategies that were used by subsidiary Enron Power Marketing Inc. (EPMI) to apparently game the California wholesale energy markets.

Trailblazer Pipeline, expanded and 100% owned by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P., goes back into service today (Tuesday) carrying KMP’s expectations of significant growth in its natural gas pipelines business segment with the increased capacity to carry gas out of the fast-growing Rockies supply area.

Production rates in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) are beginning to climb at an astonishing pace, and with better technology now available, oil and gas discoveries will continue to escalate, according to Chris Oynes, regional director of the GOM for the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Speaking at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston on Monday, Oynes said production has tripled since 1997, with natural gas up 550% and oil up 500%. Today, deepwater production is growing more than 400 MMcf/d and 100 million bbl/d every year.

Puget Sound Energy, the Bellevue, WA-based utility of Puget Energy, asked Washington state regulators Monday to lower its natural gas charges by an average of 22% by ending a $122 million, nine-month surcharge put in effect last fall to deal with skyrocketing wholesale gas prices in 2000-2001. The utility asked for the decrease effective June 1, but it also earlier had asked for a general rate increase effective Sept. 1 that would increase distribution charges by an average of 13.8%.

Questar Corp. plans to continue investing heavily in exploration and production (E&P) and reserve acquisitions in the Rocky Mountains and Midcontinent regions over the next few years to maintain its “good returns” on capital in its nonregulated businesses, and lift returns on its lagging regulated businesses, as well as sell off non-core energy assets to lighten its debt load, said the company’s new CEO Keith O. Rattie.

The sole remaining Republican appointee on the five-member California Public Utilities Commission, Henry Duque, despite an earlier court ruling recommending his removal from the state regulatory panel, Friday received a four-week extension to have time to file an appeal of an earlier ruling regarding alleged conflict-of-interest violations involving his ownership of telecommunications stock of a company the CPUC regulates.

Florida Gas Transmission was not scheduling any IT service for Monday or Tuesday. In addition to continuing an Overage Alert Day notice for its market area (at 5% imbalance tolerance) that had begun a week earlier, FGT was under a force majeure situation due to unscheduled compressor maintenance that arose over the weekend. While this unscheduled work is being performed, FGT will schedule only up to approximately 1,825,000 MMBtu/d. All market-area delivery points were being allocated Monday due to the force majeure.

The first steps have been taken toward ending a 30-year-old ban against drilling offshore of Canada’s west coast, a region projected to harbor 42 Tcf of natural gas. A technical review panel of three blue-chip experts, following months of consultations with specialists, declared there is no scientific basis for continuing the moratorium.

Anadarko Petroleum expects to beat current Wall Street estimates for the second quarter and the year with about 80 cents per share of earnings in the quarter and about $3.20 per share (diluted) for all of 2002. Wall Street estimates currently average 71 cents/share for the quarter and $2.60 for the year. However the company expects its domestic natural gas production to be down 11% this year to 509 Bcf unless company officials decide to expand Anadarko’s capital expenditure (capex) program.